Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017 Uncategorized Beacon Corey Wakeling . A black sun lights the creases in capital’s night nightcrawlers prong. The congratulatory vanguardists can accept lyrical cinema, somehow, and get away with it. Many of the butterflies puppet impressionism too. The fingers shatter on the keyboard like icicles. It is Canada, last year. Here, dolphins have given up all hope of penetrating the distant bay. Tuna fishing an obscure south-western aesthetic policy. So, she goes on hegira to the obscurest west. Ambulances lubricate words before they mince them. Then we die, best of all. Better that than bedridden or the lawn’s pandering sprinkler, the particulates get in everywhere anyhow anyway, even a little further north of the campus. He really can see Russia from the horn, the lahar a spoil of war as the isthmus breaks off. Flotillas of people remind the accountants of the G20. We must do something urgently with our pockets, chimes the ID bracelet. Not kidding, my lint paradise is a correctional facility. The books on screams are being censored, inevitably, as we rack up debts in every other humanitarian redoubt on the ferocious globe. I am an ambulance, after all. Lights are peaking. When we leave Grey Gardens for the swamp, the two malingerers greet a distant beacon. Read the rest of Overland 227 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Corey Wakeling Corey Wakeling is a poet and critic living in Takarazuka, Japan. His second full-length collection of poems is The Alarming Conservatory (Giramondo, 2018). More by Corey Wakeling 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 7 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Victoria police back down, is this a case for defunding? Crystal McKinnon and Meriki Onus After three arduous years, Victoria Police have today withdrawn their charges against two organisers of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. Whilst we welcome their decision, we note that their mediocrity gave them no other option. Emboldened by their state-sanctioned impunity, Victoria Police’s ineptitude hit a dead end. Pigs cannot fly. First published in Overland Issue 228 6 February 20237 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali: listen, hear, think, understand from our sacred Mother Earth and our Water Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali Collective To winaga-li, Gomeroi/Kamilaroi people must be able to access Gunimaa. They must be able to connect and re-connect. Over 160 years of colonisation has privileged intensive agriculture, grazing and heavily extractive water management regimes, enabled by imposed property regimes and governance systems. Gunimaa and Gali still experience the violent repercussions of these processes, including current climate changes which are exacerbating impacts, as droughts become longer, floods and heat extremes become more intense, and climatic zones shift, impacting on species’ viability and biodiversity.