Published in Overland Issue 238 Autumn 2020 · Poetry / Judith Wright Poetry Prize No alarms Dan Hogan Give the brigalows time to impersonate metal. Fold the final reminders like bed sheets. Ignore the echoes. Are you revolted the right way? Mosquito into the tidiest corruptions. Zap. Soak the stains. Ear against the wall, diagnose water hammer. Put the email address here if you are sending a copy you do not want the other recipients to see. It’s always home time somewhere but don’t tell anyone. Come bearing data. Using techniques, never live it down. Somewhere a landlord is kissing another landlord. Please clap. Consider the executive sated. Boil the kettle. Pour the tea. Prayer for meteorites. Oblivion coldens quickly when there is no-one to take a photo. Steam tentacles stopping in the air. Nobody actually knows how to count to ten. Fake it ‘til you make it. Quake-happy fault lines at the edge of the whole disgusting sky. Please clap. Not tired. Just playing with my eight-ball eyes. Misery during the work shirt donning process. Head hole problems before breakfast. A cursed nexus. Tfw it’s Thursday all day. The best part of being stuck in traffic on your way home from work is being late to the work you have to do for work after work. Clouds standing sentinel with their rain bodies above Old Guildford. The sky is about to happen. Please clap. Would you say your depression has a purpose? The air might be air-conditioned but who is ringing the bell? Ignore the previous email. This meal needs a nap. Please remember me to your boss and payroll manager. Dead leaves on the bonnet. New window wipers work. Couldn’t sleep because dreams were movies that kept rewinding. Running early for once. Do yourself a favour and don’t. Please clap. Do X number of things for Y number of means. Portending the spectre of an ending, remember to send me your bank account details for dinner. Emit an electricity of unshakeable compliance until the dawn of a new contract. Slurp. Slurp. Locomotion and food and why. False mirror enabled. So on and so forth. What is the warmest document type? What is the reverse of a chandelier? Is it fern spores? Submission without the act of submission. Ten days sick leave. A multiplicity of forces with no discernible origin. The doctors will call this a way of being on medication. Reports are due. No time to grieve for lost futures. TGIF. Please clap. Read the rest of Overland 238 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Dan Hogan Dan Hogan (they/them) is a writer and editor from San Remo, NSW (Awabakal and Worimi Country). They currently live and work on Dharug and Gadigal Country (Sydney). Dan's debut book of poetry, Secret Third Thing, was released by Cordite in 2023. Dan’s work has been recognised by the Val Vallis Award, Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and XYZ Prize, among others. In their spare time, Dan runs small DIY publisher Subbed In. More of their work can be found at: http://www.2dan2hogan.com/ More by Dan Hogan 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 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.
