Published in Overland Issue 250 Autumn 2023 · Teaser / Poetry / Judith Wright Poetry Prize New terms for timeless behaviours Chris Brown Sea’s in a building phase. City wakes to the sun or crane in the mirror of its former employ- ment. Here’s some fresh stone blocking traffic from the park. We limber. Motorise resistance and ride out on a cryptic breeze. Morning TV’s:/p> hair-raising investiture. 8:04 weather charts. Office library- quiet. Hmmm. Emotional preferences for illegible feedback. Leave the mysteries the rabbit holes to Keats. A bell: catharsis yet! or can’t wait and expedite an afternoon. Thought along a trail. Day that’s been/to come though notes are no promises. So volatile. Shelve plans/scripts for a lounge and novel on politics— the generally bifocal exercise of reading. Loads of new term- inologies for time- less behaviours. Beneath the perfect lawns of land-held Parliament House Wanted senators decline invitation for the optics of their place in a crowd. The most familiar rooms are often called spaces and housebound fifteenpage poems are formidable acts of concentration. I draw mid-day blinds on two duplicate moons weeknights ‘rest my eyes’ (all attention) economising as any device. Somewhere in the soundtrack’s anonymous love brief revival then— scanning for detail in a high-speed credits scroll where episodic means continuous. Chris Brown lives in Newcastle where he works as a teacher. bulky news press published his chapbook, slender Volume, in 2017. More by Chris Brown › 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 8 September 202312 September 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Games Heather Taylor-Johnson Days pinch and lately I’ve noticed every time I look in the mirror I’m squinting—maybe it’s a grimace. Without trying I’ve mastered the façade of a Besser block threatened by a mallet, by which I mean maybe the world won’t kill me but it’ll definitely hurt and I’ve got to be ready. First published in Overland Issue 228 31 August 20236 September 2023 · Poetry Verbing the apocalypse: Alison Croggon’s Rilke Josie/Jocelyn Suzanne ‘This again?’ and ‘why now? Why not years ago?’ are the two questions raised in each new translation of a non-English piece of Western Canon. There’s an understanding—of course a poetic cycle like the Duino Elegies is incomplete in English, there are endless new readings—and a simultaneous sense of wounded pride/suspicion: what was missing the last time around? What were you concealing from me? What are you concealing now?