Published in Overland Issue 232 Spring 2018 · Uncategorized Ghosts Kate Middleton Oh / can’t you handle / a ghost? – Alice Notley I can’t think of a time she uses it. The word. Ghost. My difficulty. Believing this. There are ghosts everywhere in her words. She just uses other. Words. Toxins. Hormones. So we talk about the words she does use. About the way they sit within the body. And we talk about present. Talk time. Talk quantum something. Oh. I say. We should talk about the other meaning. You know. Gift. No-one thinks she meant that. Even me. Until I do. This meaning a shadow. As if a momentary feeling of wholeness weren’t constant. Ly shattered. I could offer a reading. Of the poem. Of the bone flute. Drawn from the body. But. But this is not. Possible. Instead. I unwrap the word. Present. Remind me. I say. Remind me what St Augustine said. Time as a hormone. Time as a toxin. Time infects. The body. Time turns the bone to flute. Gifts its hollowed body music. Marrowless. Shaded. for Emily Stewart Image: Mark Nye / flickr Read the rest of Overland 232 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Kate Middleton Kate Middleton is an Australian writer. She is the author of the collections Fire Season (Giramondo), awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry in 2009, Ephemeral Waters (Giramondo), shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s award in 2014, and Passage (Giramondo, 2017). From 2011–2012, she was the inaugural Sydney City Poet. More by Kate Middleton › 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 December 202418 December 2024 · Nakata Brophy Prize Dawning in the rivulet of my father’s mourning Yasmin Smith My father floats words down Toonooba each morning. They arrive to me by noon. / Nothing diminishes in his unfolding, not even the currents in midwinter June. / He narrates the sky prehistorically like a cadence cutting him into deluge. 16 December 202416 December 2024 · Palestine Learning to see in the dark Alison Martin Images can represent a splice of reality from the other side of the world, mirror truths about ourselves and our collective humanity we can hardly bear to face. But we can also use them to recognise the patterns of dehumanisation that have manifested throughout history, and prevent their awful conclusions in the present. To rewrite in real time our most shameful histories before they are re-made on the world stage and in our social media feeds.
