Published in Overland Issue 243 Winter 2021 · Poetry The coffee coffee drinks Dominic Symes ‘Fortis ut mors dilectio’ — from the Song of Solomon, as inscribed on a necklace my grandfather gave my grandmother on their engagement. love is as strong as death —this coffee is at least though when the flickering bickering of a lifetime is gathered up it is unable to fill even a single cup kept in the small heart-shaped chamber of the house you carry with you everywhere we’re as close as jeans & skin —like lint collecting one another from the airport a week apart we sit together now in the shuddering depths of night watching the staff head home exhausted from straddling time zones from being so polite joint like a bank account our money is the same money even when the interest rate is variable: where do I put it all? where does it fit this misplaced romantic intensity? the libraries are full & galleries preach a learned disinterestedness this will be an everlasting love sings the cartoon baby bird discovering its voice loving you makes me not believe in miracles but in life & death turning over like the pedals on your pushbike loudly declaring their decay & rust everything tastes sweeter in the dark that trust is earned —you learn not to ignore the symptoms but to relish instead your diagnosis: to love the love you know. Read the rest of Overland 243 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Dominic Symes Dominic Symes lives quietly in Naarm. He writes poetry, some of which has been published in Australian journals and anthologies, and the best of which appears in his debut collection, I Saw the Best Memes of My Generation (Recent Work Press, 2022). More by Dominic Symes › 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 ...
