Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017 Uncategorized On his portrayal of Coach Boone in Remember the Titans Saaro Umar After Hanif Abdurraqib ‘… memories don’t work the way we want them to. when i’m lifting my daughter to the clouds, facing the football coiling towards my nose, catching my reflection in a pane of glass – greeting all twelve of my bodies – i’m in several places at once. when they ask us to leave it all in the past i imagine empty cartons with tallied grievances hanging off our backs. grief swims in circles, catching in any bit of body that bares flesh. in every moment we live the afterlife, in every moment we die, smiling. you seeing me as your father is a lie, but i understand it. chewing his gum in a way that offends, reciting I Have a Dream over eggs – eyes fixed to a point made up in his head – his self talk is not mine. but once, it narrated my nightmares in which men just like me prostrated before God and died anyways.’ Read the rest of Overland 227 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Saaro Umar Saaro Umar is an Oromo poet. Her work has appeared in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Expound and Scum Mag, among others. More by Saaro Umar 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 2 December 20222 December 2022 Unions In search of lost bargains: An interview with Scott Fitzgerald, Ryan Mead-Hunter and Francis Russell of the Bargain Hunters podcast Scott Robinson and Danni McGrath We discovered Bargain Hunters: The Curtin NTEU EBA Podcast as our own university, Monash, and the local branch of the NTEU) enter their own bargaining round. After years of workers bearing the burden of rapid COVID changes, cost of living pressures, overwork and decades of growing job insecurity, this bargaining round feels different: an opportunity for workers to articulate a vision of the university against the neoliberalised, corporate managerialism that dominates the sector and most workplaces in the country. First published in Overland Issue 228 1 December 20221 December 2022 Reviews Calling the racist a racist: Janaka Malwatta’s blackbirds don’t mate with starlings John Kinsella Malwatta is a skilled and motivated user of tone and tonality in expression, and he shifts between perpetrator and victim with a disturbing but powerful ease: we hear the racists in the hospital, we hear them at the barbecue, and we hear the racism coming from the mouths of white leaders and dissemblers.
