Published in Overland Issue 230 Autumn 2018 · Uncategorized Liptrap Fiona Hile Sifting through shells I think of you— Green striped flange truncated at the stalk, singed partner variously allocated, the dusky hearing aid of secular distance enforced. Barrel leaf cloth fastidiously sewn emits apertures of admissions stored and later, distilled, through gestures confoundingly subtle. Is there material diffuse enough to feed your repertoire? You are everywhere. I am only in the hungry, lip catching south. The sun’s breath harvests modernist pinks and greys. You, the corn-rowed data of herringboned broth, a spiralling whirlwind of lust. Or this whale doll’s layette, bargain basement, discontinued. An unrecognisable mathematics reassembles. Volcanoes assemblaged stand still in place of you. Twenty-cents’ worth of quartz harbours discordant epiphanies of the last time we met. This froth of bleach, sea floral anti-freeze. Crumbs of floss. These are not my organs here on the beach. Not my liver beating, like a heart, beneath this rock. How your sand fly disappointment stings, punishments imperceptible and easy as poison. Still, I sit, and think, and think of you, elegantly innumerable. This cudgel of white bone, only two knuckles deep. Emptied of the pod of your embrace, lesions scorn. This face has a terminal array. That lip segues every Latin hook. If you could sing to lava these finite rocks, if night could carve fresh shapes from molten ash. If these excoriated shells could conjure your rough face to a schismed retreat, the world might forgive a jawbone knuckled to prism and reflect. Read the rest of Overland 230 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Fiona Hile Fiona HIle’s collection Novelties (Hunter Publishers, 2013) was awarded the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. Her most recent book, Subtraction (Vagabond Press, 2018) won the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Award. More by Fiona Hile › 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 18 March 2024 · France Emmanuel Macron and the rearming of French demography Stephen Pascoe Demography, that supposedly neutral science of human statistics, is only ever one step away from politics. Especially so in France, where the national discourse over the past two months has summoned historical memory and hinted at political futures in disturbing admixture. First published in Overland Issue 228 8 March 20248 March 2024 · Poetry POETRY Gareth Morgan as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem