Published in Overland Issue 233 Summer 2018 · Uncategorized Learning Allison Gallagher the way sovereign bodies grow into one another enclaves coalescing to form new imperfect states when we are produced together it becomes impossible to tell the difference between good bodies and bad bodies there are just beautiful things to blossom inside broken ribcages there is just the way birthmarks of trauma dissolve when my love holds pieces of myself that have only ever seen what violence looks like i think about what the body inherits my grandfather’s wounds become my father’s wounds become mine passed down like a jawline & only ever spoken about through silence there is so much viciousness in only knowing these things through absence slowly i am learning that no one heals in solitude we cut out the ugliest parts of each other in quiet queer rituals on shared double mattresses i am learning to live inside a broken thing when i call this body a wreckage in the middle of the night you ask me not to speak about your home that way Image: Open arms / flickr Read the rest of Overland 233 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Allison Gallagher Allison Gallagher is a writer from Sydney. Their debut chapbook is Parenthetical Bodies (Subbed In, 2017). Writing has appeared in Overland, Potluck, Scum Mag and Kill Your Darlings, among others. They also sing and play bass in the band Sports Bra. More by Allison Gallagher › 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 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
