[New-Poetry] & Frogs

[Chris Lott]

Well, a toad rather than frogs, but I'm no biologist...

The Toad
Juan Jose Arreola

Every so often he jumps, just to make it clear that he is essentially
immobile. The jump is in some way like a heartbeat; careful
observation makes it plain that the whole of the toad is a heart.

Clamped in a hunk of cold mud, the toad sinks into the winter like a
mournful chrysalis. He wakes in the spring knowing that he has not
changed into anything else. Dried to his depths, he is more a toad
than ever. He waits in silence for the first rains.

And one fine day he heaves himself out of the pliant earth, heavy with
moisture, swollen with spiteful sap, like a heart tossed onto the
ground. In his sphinxlike posture there is a secret proposition of
exchange, and the toad's ugliness appalls us like a mirror.