Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 Poetry Customs declaration Nicholas Powell 1 Beginning our descent with a banking turn of phrase and amusement park views. Arm doors, arm holes. Jingoistic chit-chat in the fouled cabin air. Exiting Economy through the refuse of Business: eye-masks and fine print. Leaf-blowers on Lime St, ear-splitting beautification and warship doorstop. Great lengths to salvage the Lord Sandwich, with much pushing in for the miracle. In lorikeet-green hamlets, wallaby silhouettes are forsworn for cocktail hour at the tech-bubble and ‘Meet the Author’. Heretofore we cut a ribbon. 2 Water Bores, hence attention is drawn to a swimming article or ambling roadside thighs of the lace monitor following a flotilla and the judging of horses. The whole house plugged in to the see-saw of the mastermind’s snore. As far as meringue sunsets, sheep and wheat go, the first sod turned will be responsible. Nature has been most liberal is not just an empty phrase. No overt aching turning vehicle in the night, huge as it is, will be permitted. Although sheep, they dream of greener freedom with an inch of candle burning. Compliments and complaints comprise floats, equestrian and ring events around which agents are turned. Toy breeds with no real parallel to press forward, find conveyance in a purse. A ram changes hands, handcuffed. ‘Don’t you believe it’ is never intended as a question. 3 Vladivostok, Perm: true colour and duo-tone life of mountains. Hello Sarina/ Wowan out the window/ Biloela below/ sapphire views from the loo queue. Press button to receive tissue. Luggage exceeding the limit I had offered her my dress shoes and blue fipple-rooster (mouthpiece in the tail, finger-hole in the neck). A desultory tailpiece all but blown, twenty-seven bones forming a single bum note, projecting avian shadow puppets (the twenty-eighth order of birds) on customs’ glass. Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Nicholas Powell Nicholas Powell is an Australian poet and the author of Water Mirrors (UQP). His second collection, Trap Landscape, is forthcoming. He has lived in Finland since 2012. More by Nicholas Powell 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 6 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.