Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized breakfast at the end of a financial year Joanne Burns bodies become corpses at the whim of a machine gun rising up from carthaginian waves no more suntans or lotophagi breakfasts by the sea houellebecq you warned us but who is so cognisant when a holiday is urgent like a first or last resort v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n wimbledon is second best squawks of cockatoo hijack talk of those treasonable tweets tennis brats make threats parents slurp back ego shakes as children morph to instant geniuses or genii on rapid break-the-fast tv coffee brews avocado smash and feta bites into the burnished toast the acropolis in the distance stoic and forlorn syntagma spreads like vertigo-a-go -go; here comes cautionary ritsos as he drags his bags of stones, scratching like the claws of tiny owls along the ground will those sydney lentil counters graduate to quinoa numerology dukka delphics million dollar bedsits or simply chocolate frogs just mind the gap between the trireme and the pier dock no ATMs ahoy fate curves like a recycled frisbee in search of destiny — Joanne Burns Joanne Burns is a Sydney poet. Her most recent book is brush (Giramondo Publishing 2014). She has been a teacher of English and creative writing and has been performing her work since the 1970s. More by Joanne Burns › 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 17 June 2026 · The university Financial power in the public university: the case of ANU Beck Pearse The deeper problem is institutional. Universities have elaborate mechanisms for scrutinising knowledge claims circulating between staff and students. But we have remarkably weak mechanisms for scrutinising the financial assumptions through which executive power is exercised. 1 15 June 202616 June 2026 · Reviews Transubstantiations: Toby Fitch’s Or Grace Roodenrys The final trick of Or is that in the end it stages something utterly universal: the search for a momentary recognition of ourselves in language, the maybe-hopeless pursuit of those “very exceptional circumstances” in which something half-truthful might be said, the unending attempt to build something that feels real with the limited resources one has. This is a very old, a very sacred enterprise. We might call it poetry.