Published in Overland Issue 244 Spring 2021 Poetry Pointless, in space Belinda Rule Is there anything more fucked than a poem, when all Croajingalong has burnt, inkblot on the map of child heart, that great black banksia we feared as wicked, a thousand-socket resin candelabra, the dune plovers who swooped us year upon year, limp tumble-dried mops, shrunk-skin goannas just the sack of that skin now, soot-hazed. Ten days the line of fire on the government map sits two pixels from Cann River, the old pub where the timber men glare if you come in the front bar, bumper stickers ‘Fertilise the bush: bulldoze a greenie’, it is the right of any man to be an idiot and yet not burn alive or else what’s my excuse, dry sandwiches bitter coffee in the café, no salt on the chips at the servo, god I don’t believe in save them, my feelings booming pointless in space please save them. Read the rest of Overland 244 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Belinda Rule Belinda Rule is Melbourne writer of poetry and fiction. Her poetry chapbook, The Things the Mind Sees Happen, Puncher & Wattmann/Slow Loris, was commended in the Anne Elder Award 2019. Her first full-length poetry collection, Hyperbole, is forthcoming with Recent Works Press in 2021. More by Belinda Rule 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