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 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.
