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 Her first full collection, Keeper of the Ritual, was shortlisted for the 2017 Noel Rowe Poetry Award for an unpublished manuscript, and recently accepted for publication by UWA Publishing forthcoming in 2019.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 24 March 202324 March 2023 War Conga line to Armageddon: the rush to get us into a war with China Ben Brooker It shouldn’t need spelling out that Australia could not win a war with China in any sense that matters, even with the backing of the US and its allies. At best, such a victory would be a Pyrrhic one. At worst, we would be so utterly humiliated as to not even know what kind of defeat had been inflicted upon us. First published in Overland Issue 228 23 March 2023 Trans rights Why gender essentialism is a white supremacist ideology Maddison Stoff The idea that these neo-Nazis are just ‘cosplayers’, rather than the local version of an international and decades-long attempt by numerous lone wolves and paramilitary groups to seize control of multiple countries, is too dangerous to seriously contemplate. The better question might be: why do so many anti-trans rights activists, who often see themselves as left-wing or self-describe as feminists, tolerate or downplay the presence of Nazis in their circles? And, just as importantly, why do neo-Nazis show up to support them?