Published in Overland Issue 245 Summer 2021 Poetry Traveller Corey Wakeling after two formerly inconsecutive lines by Nishiwaki Junzaburō 詩のないところに詩がある うつつは淋しい Poetry is where poetry is not Reality is lonesome A comrade made of new-cut pine sitting rooms, because of foxed pages and clamorous awnings, warm dregs improved by salt plum —the breakfast nightingale has only commendations, and hangovers, even if Berlin remains what you’re barricaded from. Fantasy traveller, forget the temperate gauge—dispatch the claws of a hundred skunk cabbage, we do better breathlessly and undistracted at work in reassembly, limiting our confinement to enclosure and saké, even if Osaka remains beyond the territorial coordinate. Typhoon #10 had my name on it, not yours! By the southern mountainside at Yakushima, we calculate three families of grey macaque. Karatani made the transition to historian, so should you, even if the only gallery for it all becomes the Met. Reality is lonesome in poetry, illusory in fine gardening. We take up your challenge of establishing gigantic pine between two detachments. Fish in the storm drain, because you can. When the double-flowered cherry sheds, celebrate—even if spring threatens to return again. Read the rest of Overland 245 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive Corey Wakeling Corey Wakeling is a poet and critic living in Takarazuka, Japan. His second full-length collection of poems is The Alarming Conservatory (Giramondo, 2018). More by Corey Wakeling 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 7 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.
