Published in Overland Issue 233 Summer 2018 · Uncategorized Reserve Corey Wakeling From where we stood, careening quiet. The knives of shepherds slit the lambs. Later, the huge apparatus. When. When but before us, another district militarised in boredom, another hotplate oiled for serfdom; handles on everything near. City, your embrace is untold, and you are no Westminster Bridge. After all, it is still a twenty-first century. Still paper and violence. One poppy in the sidewalk mud adoring everybody. The lunar scar makes him reluctant to smile, especially during glacial melt. Wow – put a barrier between me and flare. Port Island, destination and warm home, discloses the ghosts of ferry dead in dither. The snow spangles with each touch. Sanctimony of the Reserve Bank announces its amazed press conference. Bank’s warning repeats last quarter’s: ‘the insistent voice cuts the long grass’. Can radiation help. Can Canberra. Image: Christopher A Dominic / 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 Corey Wakeling Corey Wakeling is a writer, scholar, and translator living in Tokyo. In 2013, he was granted a PhD in English and theatre studies at the University of Melbourne. Corey has lived in Japan since 2015, currently working as an associate professor of English literature at Aoyama Gakuin University. His most recent poetry collection, Uncle of Cats, appears with Cordite in 2024. More by Corey Wakeling › 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.
