Published in Overland Issue 239 Winter 2020 Poetry A matter of lives Tony Birch murder reduced to counting bodies naming names dates and days processioning through plagued streets grief – a spectacle feeding news your life – no life – what life – which and whose fucking life matters? blank headlines do not shed tears or hear the death of a living heart a black woman asleep on a train is no news is good news until the day arrives and she becomes a fact of death Read the rest of Overland 239 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Tony Birch Tony Birch is the author of Shadowboxing, Father’s Day, Blood, The Promise and Ghost River. He is currently research fellow in the Moondani Balluk Academic Centre at Victoria University. More by Tony Birch 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 3 March 20233 March 2023 Poetry Poetry | 2 rat poems by joanne burns joanne burns the courtyard rat squatting on an empire of pizza boxes rainsoaked piles of stewing cardboard flattened packaging from long covid's eager merchandise anything to transcend an unimagined plague rat traps line the walls like doctors' obsolete portmanteaux from a much earlier decade First published in Overland Issue 228 10 February 202322 February 2023 Poetry Poetry | Inflorescence Jo Langdon History or myth—picture tulip bulbs, unburied like onions. An onion is the likeness Hepburn—in Gardens of the world—proffers in the purr & lilt of vowel, halt of consonant; annunciation that lifts ready from memory
