Published in Overland Issue 244 Spring 2021 Poetry Leafless - leafs Louise Crisp (East Gippsland foothill forest: Gunaikurnai country) Words are leafless In the forest some words are too loud Most words belong to someone else The sheen of words precludes listening Leafs wait to be heard Felled: the story between earth and sky Trees are determined as the rocks The middle story Is dialogue? Logging The tracks of words eviscerate echidnas Leafs align along a ridge Do all the words inculcate colonialism? Greater gliders cannot eat your words however leafy The colonisers’ word morphs into enforcement The route into the valley is not shown by words Forest: a word with many leafs Words that are seen, leafs that are not The track vanishes off the map but the route remains Leafs as necessary as touch The old forest… The creek is not leafless, words float on the surface Read the rest of Overland 244 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Louise Crisp Louise Crisp’s latest collection is Glide (Puncher & Wattmann 2021). A previous collection Yuiquimbiang (Cordite Books 2019) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. ‘Leafless – Leafs’ was written as part of Stony Creek Collective, a multi-artform collaborative project in the foothill forests of East Gippsland (Gunaikurnai country) in 2020–21. This project was supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. More by Louise Crisp 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 3 March 20233 March 2023 Poetry Poetry | 2 rat poems by joanne burns joanne burns the courtyard rat squatting on an empire of pizza boxes rainsoaked piles of stewing cardboard flattened packaging from long covid's eager merchandise anything to transcend an unimagined plague rat traps line the walls like doctors' obsolete portmanteaux from a much earlier decade First published in Overland Issue 228 10 February 202322 February 2023 Poetry Poetry | Inflorescence Jo Langdon History or myth—picture tulip bulbs, unburied like onions. An onion is the likeness Hepburn—in Gardens of the world—proffers in the purr & lilt of vowel, halt of consonant; annunciation that lifts ready from memory
