Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 Poetry Banksia Tess Ridgway a black swarm of craters a bundle of woody beaks chirping a bari- tone, a bee hive made from a shark’s egg a sound boom dipped in tar, coal glue-gunned together to make a Christmas ornament a corn cob coated in gun powder a felty gargoyle tumour Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Tess Ridgway Tess Ridgway recently completed a Masters of Research at Western Sydney University. Her poetry has been published in Griffith Review and Otoliths. More by Tess Ridgway 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.