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 First published in Overland Issue 228 30 March 2023 Culture RollerCoaster Tycoon and the art of niche hobbies Zac Picker As a writer, I spend too much time awake at night worrying about building an audience for my work. And yet, I spend even more time awake at night, planning my next RollerCoaster Tycoon park in my head, for an audience of the hundred-or-so RCT parkmakers I care about the most. First published in Overland Issue 228 29 March 2023 Aboriginal Australia Standing in the dawn’s new light: truth-telling for settlers Anthony Kelly There’s a paradox about being a settler in a stolen country. No matter when we arrived, we inherited the bounty of genocidal violence. Many of us are the beneficiaries of the intergenerational wealth-building that saw English, Irish and Scottish settler families grow rich on the sheep, timber, wheat and resources provided by stolen land. We have a profound responsibility to dismantle the ‘lie-telling’ because it shores up this legacy and the systems of colonial violence that continue in our lifetimes.