Published in Overland Issue 232 Spring 2018 · Uncategorized Patternicity Shey Marque On a beach track at Two Rocks, a stone; its lime weighs down the sudden minute. I watch sand swarm like bees that I once saw in a market town. They sent people running into buildings for keys to lock their windows, some woman with a goose was saying just because they’re stripy doesn’t mean they are robbers. Honey bees covered the back of my shirt, tangled in my hair, me not seeing much caught in that apoidean storm. Still the sand spirals against my legs, its rough manner of being stings me into knowing again that cut grass from the old lawn mower spitting at me as it passed beside the path chalked in squares and numbers. Now the swarming grit stops mid flight a thousand little engines stalling at my feet. A specimen of limestone rock its interior carved out like a hive, the walls lined with tiny cavities, a nest abandoned, as if the sand had wings. Image: Pebbles / 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 Shey Marque Shey Marque is an emerging poet from Perth. A former medical scientist, she left her career in 2005 and completed a MA in writing in 2011. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Award Winning Australian Writing, Cordite, Meanjin, Westerly and Southerly. Aporiac, a chapbook, was published in 2016 with Finishing Line Press (USA). Her first full collection, Keeper of the Ritual, was shortlisted for the 2017 Noel Rowe Poetry Award for an unpublished manuscript, and recently accepted for publication by UWA Publishing forthcoming in 2019. More by Shey Marque › 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