Published in Overland Issue 236 Spring 2019 · Uncategorized when we elevated a section of the great wall Grace Yee we had a student from the middle kingdom stay with us for three weeks and she was perfectly happy here despite the multitudes of bullocks and a malfunctioning body scanner. there was no ill will generated when we elevated a section of the great wall. her family – descendants of a red six-volume book printed quarterly and dating back to the song dynasty – liked to chase unsavoury loans through the back entrance to their home that looked out on the yellow river. the children were fully aware at the age of nine or ten that this was a well-organised filing cabinet gratified by an embassy that specialises in orientalism. every day visitors clocked in and out, secure in their swipe-phone knowledges and officious myopias. the accused were thoroughly examined and depositions from witnesses taken to a line of dinghies moored at the banks where mindless people twitter. despite paragraph rearrangements here and there, human rights discourse retains all the harshness of wild fruit, and multicultural streams have never been in vogue, damned as they are by sand bags. the student’s advice: always use your best people and porcelain cleaned with lavender and baking soda, pay close attention to the heavy legislations framed in wood upwards of one hundred pounds in weight, forget about binding allowances, and think twice before drawing the colour line because the editor is not white and mao was not the last dancer. if you look up and admire the light fittings and ceiling cornices, we could be asian- pacific sweethearts for eight hundred years: we celestials excel at kite-flying. Read the rest of Overland 236 If you liked this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Grace Yee Grace Yee teaches in the writing and literature programs at the University of Melbourne and at Deakin University. She is currently a Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Meanjin, Rabbit, and Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. More by Grace Yee › 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.
