Published in Overland Issue 236 Spring 2019 · Uncategorized Sick day Anders Villani Somewhere between spirit and appetite, a boy untangles teabag strings, lifts floor dust with wet hands. Redbacks observe him from the cornices, and boys. He’s feverish, by himself while his mother gets groceries. Sweat pearls the salt lamp in the den. Alabaster men grapple atop the piano—white- eyed, posed and white-lipped. He knows well not to do this. Not to walk to the church op shop, root for knives whose cheap handle rivets whirl on the tang. Whose slabs peel. Not to pull from the bargain bin a bag of pressed flowers, secret petals beneath the knife handles, seal them with superglue, a found tube. Not to be wasps in the grass or minigolf holes or hoses. Not to blindfold. Not to touch, not to tell, not to read, not to let the sun shudder him, squeal him like not a boy. His cinnamon sticks, his juice bottles. His yellow assembly place. His temperature, his park, his yabby pond, his voice in drowned bark missives, his bed -eaten ankles. Read the rest of Overland 236 If you liked this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Anders Villani Anders Villani holds an MFA from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program, where he received the Delbanco Prize for poetry. His first book, Aril Wire, was released in 2018 by Five Islands Press. He lives in Melbourne. www.andersvillani.com More by Anders Villani › 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.
