Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017 · Uncategorized A lunar binge Omar Sakr I am not hungry, and this feels wrong. It is Ramadan, the holy month of fasting which begins with the moon bent over, showing only curve. My tongue is grey with wanting, the way it used to be when I was a boy and went without taste. It’s hard to explain how much it excited my body. We’d wake at an illicit hour eyes red, breath blue, and troop to the kitchen for a pre-dawn meal of prayer crackling out the radio and cornflakes to crunch on, or buttery eggs to swallow. Run through the whole summer, the oppressive heat, playing cricket, childish acrobatics, falling into creeks, conquering trees, trying to eat all the fuck yous and cunts and cocks that normally erupted out our mouths. No swearing, no drop of moisture to pass the lips, no body to lust after, no hardness to master except this hunger, this need, this careful religious observation of succulence passing into other boys, their sisters, our friends. The sweating bottle kissing their teeth, their neck curving up, the light on their skin, cheeks drawn in & in. Sucking, my god, water. Watching the moon fatten at night, as if feasting on us. It is Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, and I feel right. It begins with bending over a man until he’s only curve, and loving his everything. My tongue is grey with wanting, the way it’s always been. It’s hard to explain how my body excites to touch. We wake at a witching hour, flushed with the warmth of shared breath, and saunter into tomorrow, wet with fullness. Nowhere to run, we linger in now, in cunts and cocks painting our mouths, the heat of opening, a surrendering yes five times a day in a darkened room guessing the direction toward satisfaction. I am tired of being careful, I am over observation, I want to master your hardness and mine. Your pliant flesh, our friend, their sister. Kissing the sweating bottle curving up, light on skins, cheeks drawn in & in. Sucking, my god, us. The moon wanes, as I fatten beneath it, an undone famine, a feast not to be wasted. Read the rest of Overland 226 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Omar Sakr Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses (Cordite, 2017) and The Lost Arabs (UQP, 2019) which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. His debut novel, Son of Sin (2022) is out now. More by Omar Sakr › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 1 December 20231 December 2023 · History ‘We’re doing everything but treaty’: Law reform and sovereign refusal in the colonial debtscape Maria Giannacopoulos I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together. First published in Overland Issue 228 30 November 202330 November 2023 · Urbanism The Plains exposes the psychic terrain of Victoria’s highways Fred Pryce The Plains charts the psychic terrain of the freeway in miniature, peeling back the lid of the private vehicle to expose just one of the millions of dramas taking place in simultaneity, severed from one another yet still part of the same city-wide traffic ballet.
