With one minor change, you can make a pretty general in-fix operator:

sub fred($) {
    return Overloaded::Module->new( @_ );
}

$y= 4 +fred 8;
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So by replacing your "&" with a "+", you have a custom in-fix operator. Note the prototype so that the subroutine consumes a single argument in scalar context like "+" would.

Yes, this is a pretty hackish thing to do. It can be confusing enough that you might not want to do this at all. That depends on your situation. For most situations I would not recommend this.

Update: ...except you wanted the right-hand side to be an array. In that case I might use a prototype of (\@) to force an array on the right side.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")