Published in Overland Issue Tribulations from the digital frontier · The internet / Poetry Threnody Liam Ferney i.m. the five foot assasin tl;dr 1. Honeybear don’t care. Facepalm your first world problems. ‘Do you even lift annoying girl?’ Tag a workmate who knows Chuck Norris puts the laughter in manslaughter. A Navy Seal copies pasta for his overly attached girlfriend. Bad luck Brian, haters gonna hate. 2. Brace yourself. The 6 o’clock news says winter is coming and Brent Rambo approves. I hate sandcastles, homophobic seals and archaic rap because I’m the most interesting man in the world and ain’t nobody got time for that. Cash me ousside. Howbow dah? 3. Techno Viking, Success Kid, Insanity Wolf and Nice Guy Greg turn out for Glorious Leader 2: Electric Boogaloo but that’s none of my business. Condescending Wonka says ‘Hide the pain Harold, capitalism is the root of all evil.’ Yes. This is Dog. 4. Sad eyed Chloe says u mad? It’s my downfall when another boy has a balloon. Some men just want to watch the world burn, but Salt-bae knows that feeling bro’. I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now. 5. When you use thus in a poem you give hipster Ariel a neckbeard. I live turtle and blue ivy on the balcony. ‘You must be new here. What if I told you I will find you and I will kill you?’ ‘Come at me ‘bro.’ ‘It’s a trap.’ You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. 6. Gordo Granudo has acquired four score and nineteen difficulties but a wench cannot be counted among them. Clarence Suddenclarity finds it on the dance floor, says: ‘if you you don’t don’t love deserve me at my me at my 7. The narwhal bacons at midnight with Keanu’s conspiracies of ancient aliens who don’t want to live on this planet with hipster baristas. I for one welcome our insect overlords but McKayla is not impressed. ‘This is Sparta!’ Bye Felcia. One does not simply shut up and take my money. 8. Is a fly without wings called a walk? That’d be great if you can find my distracted boyfriend and show him a banana for scale. The chemistry cat had one job but to be fair you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. What in tarnation was scumbag Steve thinking? Fucking magnets. How do they work? 9. If someone has sex in an airplane would it count as giving a flying fuck? Dafuq? Look at all the fucks I give. The ridiculously photogenic guy does the Harlem Shake to roll safe and gets his family a cameo on their favourite tv show. It’s a third world success but they see me rollin’ they hatin’. Emagerd that escalated quickly. Image: Sergiu Bacioiu / flickr Liam Ferney Liam Ferney’s most recent collection, is Hot Take His previous collection, Content, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His other books include Boom (Grande Parade Poets), Career (Vagabond Press) and Popular Mechanics (Interactive Press). He is a media manager, holder of the all-time games record for the New Farm Traktor Collective and convener of the Saturdays readings in Brisbane. More by Liam Ferney 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 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.