Published in Overland Issue 229 Summer 2017 · Uncategorized To the only begetter Aidan Coleman For WH Like rope and pulley work to hold up pink and stodgy cherubs. Like the apple of my iPhone, faint of charge. Like the superfluity of biker’s arms or the big and little words of lovers’ cells. Like the stylised tantrum of youth rejecting the tutelage you feigned. Like shy graffiti or the bling of cases. Like the cashing trees. Like toddlers hovering at the margins, where dragons used to be, or a high-speed ransack of outdoors. Like sudden mushrooms blooming pages between or the screwdriver of your pocket knife taken to canvases. Like your skywriting jet gunned down mid-cliché. These trifles. Read the rest of Overland 229 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Aidan Coleman Aidan Coleman has published two poetry collections, the most recent, Mount Sumptuous (Wakefield Press, 2020). He is an Early Career Researcher at the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide. More by Aidan Coleman › 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 6 November 2026 · Friday Fiction Headland Harry Goddard He must have still been sore. I could tell from the winces he made as he scooted down the trail. Some unspoken agreement of not hitting other people’s children — and the circumstances of me not being that type of kid — spared me from the same punishment. I was taken to my parents who agreed I would have to work off the damages, and I must have mowed the lawn once, or cleaned the family car. 4 November 2026 · Film MIFF, Minotaur and the politics of maternal reception Alicia Byrnes Maternal labour is, in the terms I’ve set out here, not labour at all. Noisy, unfocused, mobile, perhaps even sleepy — it is an affront to arthouse film viewing and therefore unserious.
