Published in Overland Issue 240 Spring 2020 Uncategorized Poem | The oysters roar Ben Walter Rounds of unshucked applause bursting from the silt; for the festival heat, as though the sun has scraped back this tide; for the cast-away tyres and steps in a dark, treeless wood; for the fluttering white hedges shifting borders by the hour; for the tier of salty green fingers licked by the breeze; for the baskets of grass gathering shy feathers; for my footsteps like crunching jaws; for slim bones splintering the air; for the wide banks of twilight as evening flows between my feet and deepens; for the birds that have left us to brick up their bodies with rushes and leaves. so much still, silent applause. or so many unruly teeth snarling Read the rest of Overland 240 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Ben Walter Ben Walter’s stories, essays and poems have appeared in Lithub, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and many other publications. He is the fiction editor of Island. More by Ben Walter 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 24 March 202324 March 2023 War Conga line to Armageddon: the rush to get us into a war with China Ben Brooker It shouldn’t need spelling out that Australia could not win a war with China in any sense that matters, even with the backing of the US and its allies. At best, such a victory would be a Pyrrhic one. At worst, we would be so utterly humiliated as to not even know what kind of defeat had been inflicted upon us. First published in Overland Issue 228 23 March 2023 Trans rights Why gender essentialism is a white supremacist ideology Maddison Stoff The idea that these neo-Nazis are just ‘cosplayers’, rather than the local version of an international and decades-long attempt by numerous lone wolves and paramilitary groups to seize control of multiple countries, is too dangerous to seriously contemplate. The better question might be: why do so many anti-trans rights activists, who often see themselves as left-wing or self-describe as feminists, tolerate or downplay the presence of Nazis in their circles? And, just as importantly, why do neo-Nazis show up to support them?