Published in Overland Issue 239 Winter 2020 · Poetry Below the line Jaya Savige Once off the ship from sector blah blah <<snip snip>> ___________________ personfromporlock wrote at 23:55: Yeah yeah. What started out so-so quickly became the same old, same old— really just another there there number, parading the ghost of his mama, nostalgic for the promise of Expo ’88, longing for the turquoise lagoons of Bora Bora, where flash as sailfish, headstrong as mahi-mahi, muscular as leaping marlin, I … yadda yadda. You know, the usual. Can’t say I took it in in toto. What I did read reminded me of the Berber I bunked with in Woop Woop during my gap years—the faintly musical donk donk of the goat bells. Sure it was funny, but not ha-ha funny; more funny-sad, like the elegy for Ford Ford in William Williams’ The Wedge (’44). Or the porcelain sunflower seeds of Ai Weiwei. In a dream we’re onstage at Hay-on-Wye, Ai and I. I play the spectral glide, the wah-wah rhythm to his laser beam. Pew pew. ‘Something’s up with this game’s AI,’ Ai mutters, hurling his console. ‘Aye yai yai, Ai,’ I cry, dodging. ‘Watch it ya big dodo!’ ‘Pedantry’s a gateway drug! Ask John Lyly!’ shouts a heckler in—is it Gubbi Gubbi? And I would’ve asked him too, but … But what? But Lyly was at the putt putt practicing his trick shots with Boutros Boutros Ghali, Lady Gaga, Gigi and one of the Durans from Duran Duran. I know I know, there were no actual Durans in Duran Duran, but what work doesn’t leak? Like the sly drip drip against the party leader at a bunga bunga, art is deep background, a rumoured fifty-fifty fuck between knack and technique, the glug glug of Bob Hawke with a yard glass, and the inevitable tsk tsk. admin wrote at 00:00: Stop, thief! What’s the big idea? That’s my tutu. Read the rest of Overland 239 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Jaya Savige Jaya Savige was born in Sydney, grew up in Moreton Bay and Brisbane, and lives in London, where he lectures at the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern. He is the author of Latecomers (UQP, 2005), which won the New South Wales Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, and Surface to Air (UQP, 2011), shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year. His next collection, Change Machine, is forthcoming from UQP in 2020. More by Jaya Savige › 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 8 March 20248 March 2024 · Poetry POETRY Gareth Morgan as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem 16 February 202419 February 2024 · Poetry Two poems from 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem Nam Le But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...