Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017 · Uncategorized Switch Omar Sakr my heart is a nude bulb. Or is it my cock? Both muscles are small & hard. Blink often, or at least wear protection, I repeated but you refused. Said light made all days a Pollock painting, spotted colours running each other over. You cupped the fluttering red of it made shadowed animals dance along my ribcage with your hands. I was dizzy beneath the beasts you made of me. Sometimes I let loose language that shot across our skins, erecting our hairs. Other times silence arrived in the mail, it popped out of phones, leaked from fanged sockets. I dribbled it in my sleep. I tried turning everything off, tried to find you in the dark & in the hush see your small muscles burst electric. Image: ‘City ribcage’ / Cydarianna 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 30 April 2026 · Housing Organised abandonment and Victoria’s Big Housing Build Oli Caruana-Brown and Ella McNicol The crisis is not due to a physical shortage of properties. Rather, it is a series of intentional decisions by Governments to prioritise a system of private property over peoples’ basic human need for shelter, allowing landlords and corporations to continue to hoard housing and extract wealth from tenants via rent. 29 April 202629 April 2026 · literary culture “You are here”: a conversation about poetry and politics with Jeanine Leane Lyndall Thomas Jeanine won the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her collection of poetry, gawimarra gathering. My conversation with her was recorded on Bunurong Country and in Naarm, in the east Kulin nations.
