Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017 · Uncategorized Equal first place: OK Cupid Holly Isemonger A man who ‘writes’ messages me on OkCupid saying he won’t read other authors, wants ‘it to be original’. A receipt is in the corner of the chat window. I hope that he gets the message. Cupid messages the other man who gets a window of hope that authors me. He wants the message to be original, he writes on a receipt. I chat in the corner saying ‘it is ok … won’t be read’. Arrange today. Be at the grass. Plane some bodies to a low point. Here is what assembles overhead. Momentarily decide on the one to love. Do you still know that flies? Cupid says the original message won’t be OK. He authors the window and that receipt. I corner a man of hope and chat in other messages. He wants to write it to me. Who gets read? At what point do you decide to love someone? Bodies arrange on the grass. The day assembles. A low plane flies overhead. Know that to be here is to be momentarily still. Desire reversing out a driveway. My eyes water lines of asphodels. End the real paradise scene. Shot the last piece of our tribute. I walk to the car. Still here at a low point. Love momentarily assembles on bodies, arrange some head. Today you decide on what to do-over: the grass, ‘be the one’, the plane that flies. Our end lines paradise. I walk to the asphodels. Desire drives the real scene reversing a car out of shot. My eyes water, a way to tribute the last piece. The last piece of paradise walks out of shot. The eyes water. My tribute to real desire. Asphodels line our driveway. I end the scene: a car reversing. Read the rest of Overland 226 If you enjoyed this prizewinning poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Holly Isemonger Holly has been published in Cordite, Shabby Doll House and Voiceworks. She is the author of the chapbook Hip Shifts (If A Leaf Falls Press) and Deluxe Paperweight(Stale Objects dePress) . She can be found at hisemonger.tumblr.com and tweets @hisemonger. More by Holly Isemonger › 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 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.