Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry The well Neika Lehman just try and stop a mind rolling back from cooked fish and a clear horizon—fervor’s up along the pier, just quick food and all these bodies blow on hot bones in bitter wind urban dykes befriend their scraps naming loudly as they go: a rib in ‘Sheer Ivory’ a rib in ‘Sudden Spike’ debased fish spirit’s cosmetic insignia city sky tonight bones fling out to silted Narrm to silver Port Phillip Bay unceremonious my dykes feed translucent crabs they breed madly now it is May Old Country discourse is further adrift the Bass Strait well harks back— muka nipakawa a well of ocean waves and bones not yet with grave oh, my island and its silent rejections my island and its returns like the great white that follows a too hot seal I am “going out and coming back” all nipakawa to the island are generative not fully formed each view framed by muka’s seeing shore: a healthy snake made of mist a mountain at the sea a shell that waits in needled grass here they are living the classics I recall weeks of bed depression hiding under blankets reading the debates: whole PhDs written by Brits on whether we ate fish! so well studied and so well told it takes art and isolation to stay here I feel bad for my partner with no utopia there is just nostalgia but there is always some fish leftover it is always on my behalf 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 Neika Lehman Neika Lehman is a Trawlwoolway writer and artist living in Narrm since 2014. More by Neika Lehman › 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 ...