Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 Poetry Conspiracy theory is contemporary genre literature Louis Armand 1. the task isn’t to tell the truth / but to induce in the reader / the belief that they’ve discovered it 2. only the poet finds Abyssinia inside the toe of their shoe 3. there are / worlds / where the sea / never / makes landfall 4. they dream of a sentence that can be pursued to the end with absolute certainty; of a word as definitive as a tombstone; of a book after which nothing more can be said 5. silence / finally / also unheard Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Louis Armand Louis Armand’s books include, most recently, The Garden (11:11 Press), Monument (with John Kinsella; Hesterglock Press) and Vampyr: A Chronicle of Revenge (Alienist). He lives in Prague. More by Louis Armand 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 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. 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 14 December 202225 January 2023 Reviews The moral risk of taking things too seriously: on Gareth Morgan’s When A Punk Becomes A Spunk Elese Dowden In his review of Lucy Van’s The Open, Gareth Morgan writes that Van writes 'against the impulse to ponder dutifully about the sins of the past and present.' This fucked me up for some time. What is it to ponder dutifully? But perhaps more importantly, how do we ponder in a way that's more … metal?
