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 8 March 20248 March 2024 · Poetry POETRY Gareth Morgan as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem 16 February 202419 February 2024 · Poetry Two poems from 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem Nam Le But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...