Published in Overland Issue 237 Summer 2019 · Uncategorized In this letter, i can finally grammar yourself into a poem Duy Quang Mai dear Quang, don’t forget you are already here, sky-clean in light. doesn’t matter when this city less flame, i tell you that we stay yes, we do. so by writing you this i’m chiseling these syllables to our heart’s music. remember that sometimes, our punctuations fall apart for a reason. i think ‘chaos’ in our mother-tongue has another body, turning to ‘chào’ or vietnamese for hello. & hello a cliché that harvests the spring in your mouth you are here to give life, Quang so get up. been a while but i hope you earn a nice day (?) sorry so much for your patience (?) & everything kind regards,,,:; – (maybe a hyphen could help this continue / go on / outstretch / please / p l e a s pl e a s e p lea se / live / live / live x 10^100^10000) i miss you into a famine. i really do? Read the rest of Overland 237 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Duy Quang Mai Duy Quang Mai is an international student in Sydney, originally from Hanoi, Vietnam. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Lifted Brow, Cordite Poetry Review and Rabbit. More by Duy Quang Mai › 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 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.
