Published in Overland Issue · Uncategorized Dream kitchen Eileen Chong I saw my ancestor making omelettes // from leftover bits of shadow. ‘Year’s End’, Chen Chen In my dream, I was sitting in my usual seat at the round table in my grandmother’s kitchen. Next to it, in the living room, a heavy wooden bench where the sofa should have been, intricately carved with flowers, inlaid with bright mother-of-pearl: a partial repayment of a debt owed to my dead grandfather. Also accepted: sandalwood sculptures of eighteen luohan in glass cases, their faces detailed and grotesque in eternal speechlessness. The crags of the mountains where the immortals perched were wet with our tears. We learned not only of his death, but of our own fates: to become moths hurling our small bodies over and over at backlit doors which would never open for us. In my dream, my grandmother was serving me boiled dumplings in a rice bowl. I picked one up with chopsticks and bit it in half. It was filled with words; they oozed across blue-and-white porcelain. There were Chinese characters, and letters from the English alphabet. I coughed up glitter into a pink napkin; golden numerals spilled from the cloth onto the tiled floor. I asked for some tea. My grandmother reached into the wicker basket, and lifted out a grey rock with a spout and a handle. Little red fish swam in my cup, but when I raised it to my lips, they turned into yellow starfish that unfurled like suns. I knew it was only a dream, because I was in my bed, alone. I was far from her, and home. Read the rest of Overland 245 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive Eileen Chong Eileen Chong is an Australian poet. She is the author of eight books. Her next collection of poetry, A Thousand Crimson Blooms is forthcoming from UQP in April 2021. She lives and works on unceded Gadigal land of the Eora Nation. www.eileenchong.com.au More by Eileen Chong › 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 4 December 20234 December 2023 · Climate politics Where is the Australian climate movement’s solidarity with Palestine? Alex Kelly Let this be a line in the sand. Let us learn our history. Let us listen to liberation movements around the world. Conflicts for land and water will shape the decades to come. Showing up for each other and building power to demand justice is our only hope for a humane future. First published in Overland Issue 228 1 December 20231 December 2023 · History ‘We’re doing everything but treaty’: Law reform and sovereign refusal in the colonial debtscape Maria Giannacopoulos I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together.