Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017 Uncategorized Faulkner Cassandra Atherton My mother is a fish. I have buried her three times already, but the water table is high and she floats to the surface. I cleaned her, using scissors to cut anteriorly through the bones attached to her pelvic fins, but I can’t cross the river while her cloudy eyes are directed at the sky. The tackle box is full of the rusty hooks of untried catches. I take a pitted sinker and use the fishing line to weigh down her fleshy isthmus. There is water in my shoes but I can feel the stones rise beneath my feet. Image: Fly fishing tackle box next to stream / Chesapeake Bay Program Read the rest of Overland 227 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Cassandra Atherton Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning poet and the poetry editor for Westerly. She has been a Harvard Visiting Scholar, and a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo. Cassandra has published eight books, most recently the three-volume Sketch Notes. She has a Creative Victoria grant to write a prose poetry graphic novel on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. More by Cassandra Atherton 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 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 3 February 20233 February 2023 Fiction Fiction | Romeo and Juliet II: Haunted rentals Georgia Symons The hauntings are actually quite flamboyant here, though. Yeah, come in, come in. Not like my friend Moya’s house—it just has a tool shed that sometimes isn’t there and that’s it. So boring. Yes, you can keep your shoes on. 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 2 February 20233 February 2023 The university Deadly word games: universities and defining antisemitism Nick Riemer In a few weeks, Vice-Chancellors will be discussing a request by a group of federal politicians to endorse the latest weapon in Zionists’ longstanding bid to suppress criticism of Israeli apartheid on campus—the highly controversial definition of antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Their decision will constitute a watershed moment for universities’ already somewhat threatened credibility as centres of independent analysis and truth-telling.
