Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 · Uncategorized Foxes strung up on fence on Toodyay-Bindi Bindi Road: in the accusative John Kinsella On land cleared to a few trees you say you’re protecting native wildlife (but not kangaroos, because ‘they’re feral by any other definition’); you tell us that you’re a safe user of firearms, protecting lambs you’ll send to slaughter; you string foxes up on fences so the public can know what it’s like to fight for a cause, corpses of enemies piled high for the townsfolk to file past and know the cost of battle. The cost of the kill, pride in marksmanship, celebration and mateship. Your triumphs are the triumphs of ancient Rome, of death squads anywhere anytime; such a timeless occupation. Good thing there’s no bounty on animal libbers and greenies, as you might just be tempted to break the rule of robotics not to kill humans; for the general good, the cause. Foxes strung out on a fence show us you’ll stand up and be counted, O mighty warriors of the farmlands. We’ve known your spotlights probe into our houses at night. We live with that. We catch our breath and watch our words. The dead fox. The dead cat. The dead roo. The dead the dead the dead. John Kinsella John Kinsella’s new work includes the story collection Pushing Back (Transit Lounge, 2021), Saussure's Kaleidoscope Graphology Drawing-Poems (Five Islands Press/Apothecary Archive, 2021) and The Ascension of Sheep: Collected Poems Volume 1 (UWAP, 2022). More by John Kinsella › 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 1 December 20231 December 2023 · History ‘We’re doing everything but treaty’: Law reform and sovereign refusal in the colonial debtscape Maria Giannacopoulos I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together. First published in Overland Issue 228 30 November 202330 November 2023 · Urbanism The Plains exposes the psychic terrain of Victoria’s highways Fred Pryce The Plains charts the psychic terrain of the freeway in miniature, peeling back the lid of the private vehicle to expose just one of the millions of dramas taking place in simultaneity, severed from one another yet still part of the same city-wide traffic ballet.