Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Runner-up, Nakata Brophy Prize: A dance of hands Kirli Saunders You and I were the lychees sucked from blistered shells, and navel to cheek park sleeps, the skating of fingers over cracked palms and the tempura kisses awaiting trains. We were the space held so that traumas could surface, speak and heal, and the rising of chest as spine lowered and breath slowed. You and I, were the footsteps through crowded bookshops on sacred Sundays our tales untold, we were the welding of wine to tongue in an unnamed pub. You and I were handmade cakes, window notes, pocket poems, and bodies coiled to rising sun or the calm of late night story. We were time-travellers with slow motion lips, eyes talking over ginger tea sips, and hearts euphoric on eurythmic beat skips. Read the rest of Overland 231 If you appreciate Overland’s support of new writers, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Kirli Saunders Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman. She is the Manager of Poetic Learning and Cultural Liaison at Red Room Poetry. Kirli founded the Poetry in First Languages project. Her first children’s picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines has been selected for Bologna Book Fair 2018. More by Kirli Saunders › 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 18 May 202618 May 2026 · Militarisation Sacrificed for the Pentagon: on Australia’s “security” crisis Gwenaël Velge The connection between the Jarrah Forest, the submarine base, and the data centres is not metaphorical. It is the three pillars of AUKUS, made material in a single city. Pillar III strips the forest to supply aluminium and gallium to the other two pillars, gutting environmental and water security. 15 May 2026 · Friday Fiction The structure Dominic Carew We made it to the park by eight. The winter sun was filtering through the far trees in a wan, lemon trickle, the thin clouds sheets of white. The cool sky a rubbed-at blue. The grass squelched beneath our feet and elsewhere, thinned from wear, the earth stretched grassless and muddy and, in some parts, released a thick mist.
