Published in Overland Issue 241 Summer 2020 · Poetry ice skater Monique Lyle She loved to look like lovers and to be dressed all in white. The hems of her trousers tolling out like great balloons and with the waist pulled tiny tight, she sprang up high into the sky like that. She stretched up her little arms and continued across the ice with the force of a smooth wind. Bending in half she saw her reflection, salt-crust and snow for lashes. She noticed big trees and tusks in the pond. She scooted across one more time letting bracelets and rings, pearls and diamantes, cuff brooch pendant and pin fall and clankle on the ice. It was a pleasure to watch her sprite back and forth bending and turning dipping and sipping rising and surmising— chasing everything that had fallen. Monique Lyle Monique Lyle is a writer and improviser. She is currently completing a PhD with the Writing and Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Recently her work has appeared in Overland, Cordite, Flash Cove, Otoliths and Mascara Literary Review. More by Monique Lyle › 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 5 November 2025 · Poetry Force posture agreement Miroslav Sandev The men of Darwin have all taken their rottweilers / out for a walk at the same time. / For our protection. Like Pine Gap: / all those big white eyes that scan / the darkening horizon. / The eyes stay woke, so that we may sleep. / Or so they say. 1 22 August 202522 August 2025 · Poetry starmight K.A Ren Wyld Ending genocide and apartheid is the story. Palestinian liberation is the story. / Aboriginal rights is the story. Truth, justice, treaties and land back is the story. / Global Indigenous peoples’ solidarity and joy is the story. Kinship is the story.
