Published in Overland Issue 236 Spring 2019 · Uncategorized Toad Damen O'Brien Toad in the garden, which is the same as a snake in Eden or a crack in a mirror. Inexpungable blot of evil but we must try. The castle must be defended and each can be the mother of an empire, a pullulating and teeming pathogenesis threatening to gush out of the gaping mouth of nightmare, cover the world, flatten the lettuces. When we were young enough for casual violence we’d roam through the plush veil of darkness just beyond the moth-blow floodlights with cut down golf-clubs and feeble torches, stumbling and giggling, night-blind and sugar crazy, until we’d echo-locate the resolute density of a toad. Wild invisible arcs and that satisfying thump of bodies. Changeling stones, staring us down. There was a black plague creeping southward and Queensland was lost, untouchable and alien, the language of genocide, not that we knew it then, the protection of feral snowy river brumbies for the nostalgia of a poem was years away. Dot to dot brown spatter of the enemy laid out on wet season roads and our challenge was efficient returns, swerving the 4WD in slime. Inexhaustible armies of malevolence, but now I can’t decide on measures of humanity: cold frozen euthanasia over the gassing eternity of asphyxia. We sling her kicking and indomitable into her own hell, the bag crackling in the wheelie bin and for hours her scissoring legs thump out someone’s punishment until ants climb the lid, not offering rescue. Read the rest of Overland 236 If you liked this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Damen O'Brien Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning poet based in Brisbane. Damen’s prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize, the Café Writers Poetry Competition, the Magma Judge’s Prize and the New Millennium Writings Award. His poems have been published in New Ohio Review, Arc Poetry Journal, Anthropocene, Aesthetica and many other journals. Damen’s first book of poetry is Animals With Human Voices. More by Damen O'Brien › 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 24 April 2024 · History Anzac Day and the half-remembered history of the Anzacs in Palestine Bill Abrahams and Lucy Honan Schools are deliberate targets for government-funded mystification about Australia’s role in wars. Such instances of official remembrance crowd out the realities of war, and the consequences of Australia’s role in imperialism. As teachers, we should strive to resist this, and we should introduce our students to a fuller understanding of the history of the Anzacs. 22 April 2024 · Gaming Game-death in infinite game-worlds: Darkest Dungeon 2 Josie/Jocelyn Suzanne Death is the ultimate stamp of value. It was invented to sell arcade-like 1 Up repetition to the home market. To read politics in videogames is to learn to read necropolitically, which is why gamers don’t like politics.