Published in Overland Issue 239 Winter 2020 Poetry Tempest prognosticator Penelope Leyland The storm glass agrees it has been a winter of oddities— big soft flakes at the surface, a tangle of collapsing fractals below. Three Melbourne women in their eighties have been discovered dead in unheated rooms, one in an original origami of insulating newspaper, the others in overcoats, in their beds. A dozen leeches occupying Merryweather’s glass chambers sense the next Channel tempest and undulate for the exit. Their action triggers the hammer that strikes a small bell. In record Paris heat, bottled Perrier is distributed to the homeless and Brevet exams are postponed. Concerns are held for the phoneless and for those who have not phoned. The storm glass is a curio, a simple crystal garden. The leech tubes lie empty in the Whitby town museum. But within any margin of error and as far as we can tell— the more times any bell is struck the nearer we inch to hell. Read the rest of Overland 239 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Penelope Leyland Penelope Layland is a Canberra poet. Her most recent book, Things I’ve thought to tell you since I saw you last, was short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize in the 2019 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. More by Penelope Leyland 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 4 First published in Overland Issue 228 1 February 20233 February 2023 Reviews This is where the rat bastard poem comes in Dan Hogan Rats will be found wherever nonsense presented as sense becomes the authority. Such is the cornerstone of anything organised along lines of capital: bureaucracies, workplace hierarchies, real estate, aspiration culture, institutions, ruling class artifice, governments, etcetera. Wherever there is capital there are rats—hoarding creatures, capital’s henchmen. First published in Overland Issue 228 16 December 202225 January 2023 Poetry Poetry | Wombats shit candy Michael Farrell To avoid treading on a snake, I stepped on a land mine. Did this really happen, in my dream? No. Is it a fiction, then? Yes and no. The time I spend looking for socks is insignificant: lie, irony, or philosophy? Wombats shit candy. Joke – hallucination? This is in fact a truth claim. My poems: litanies of truth claims.