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 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 ...