Published in Overland Issue 209 Summer 2012 · Uncategorized Winter war Maria Takolander At dawn the birch trees are ice-smacked: shocked and glassy. The man limps across the snow, like a toad, his only illness memory. Light presses against his eyes, like a shard of the bottle he broke over the night — though it was the evening, softer than skin, that had tempted him from hiding. He recalls the suckling: iron-bitter as the earth, yet river-silken. Then the black sky: pricked with stars like a medieval device and cold as iron. How the birch trees, pale as naked men, were flayed against them. Maria Takolander Maria Takolander is the author of a book of poems, Ghostly Subjects (Salt Publishing 2009), which was shortlisted for a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2010, and her poems have appeared annually in The Best Australian Poems (Black Inc.) and/or The Best Australian Poetry (UQP) since 2005. She was recently awarded an Australia Council grant to complete a collection, The Double, which will be released by Text Publishing in 2013. She is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Deakin University in Geelong. More by Maria Takolander › 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 18 March 2024 · France Emmanuel Macron and the rearming of French demography Stephen Pascoe Demography, that supposedly neutral science of human statistics, is only ever one step away from politics. Especially so in France, where the national discourse over the past two months has summoned historical memory and hinted at political futures in disturbing admixture. First published in Overland Issue 228 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