Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown Poetry A spiral (or certain themes revisited) Leah Muddle 1. The largest square is for the sky. We have a great little room for seeing it, for watching storms come. Bending trees and oversized clouds emphatically going . . . All formula but it’s still a thrill, especially when the room fills golden. 2. You say what is a rook? and I run to see it. Images of a ‘gregarious’ bird and one blank-looking chess piece. Each bird has a face that looks just so old, like dozens of birds in one. 3. Towards an essence, or to a multitude? That’s a biggish question. 4. Think of the rook — from nothing, to bristling, to flight . . . Whatever is between zero and one is so astonishing. From sitting to dancing . . . 5. At the moment, each day’s arc can be too closely observed. The mornings are okay and the evenings may eventually turn out alright, too (little curling tail). But the afternoons are treacherous. (5.2) Bobbing onewards on my bits of wood (clutching something — a shoebox?) while everything hastens otherwards. 6. The clouds have been painted on and I can tell in which order the colours: YELLOW, then a PINK that eclipses the yellow, spoils of GREY, patches of INDIGO BLUE. In ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, remember how CF says — what colour are the clouds, and SJ says — WHITE . . . and he says — what colour are the clouds, and she looks again and starts to list YELLOW etc. If loyal to my mind, I’d have to say: Johannes Vermeer is no Dick Bruna . . . (6.2) Too silly I know. *Ha*, *ha*, la, la — — 7. — — flippin’ o’er the pages, rustling the paper stacks, towering the boxes, teasing the sticking-out feathers, rankling, rankling as the wind does the trees. (7.2) A mess, a good mess, and I am getting somewhere. (7.3) One is the sky, two is a spread-winged rook . . . nine is a driblet of coffee , 8. The white square of the mind eludes me, so I’m going for something a bit Last Days of Chez Nous. There’s a decent still of the three women at the table, all with reddish hair, red wines, tomato pasta and green beans, a bitter yellow tablecloth. (Kerry Fox in an emerald green top). Its notions of what’s free are obvious and clunky but ring true: STRONG dancing, getting in the car to drive off, a Sydney that’s a touch lurid, finally walking out to find the base of the spire. 9. Oh, no — I’ve no religion (!) except, today, the rook. (9.2) I’ll return to the rook now a star, now a pinprick. Read the rest of Poetry in Lockdown, edited by Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma If you enjoyed this special edition, subscribe and receive a year’s worth of print issues, the online magazine, special editions and discounted entry to our literary competitions Leah Muddle Leah Muddle is an artist, poet and would-be retail worker. Her writing can be found in journals such as Cordite, Plumwood Mountain and The Slow Canoe. She is also the publisher of Shower Books chapbooks including, It’s what we’re already doing, in collaboration with Elena Gomez, Ella O’Keefe, Melody Paloma, Sian Vate and Emily Stewart. More by Leah Muddle 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 4 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 Friday 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.