Three Poems by David McLean

a desperate dog 

a childhood is a desperate dog
under a bed, a memory
in an empty attic
where dust grows lonely

where the boxes have dissolved
into the grayness behind the light,
into the beyond of being
where a dream is,

where desperation is in dogs
and children, in everything
that lives, where nothing happens
so there is nothing to forgive




after history ends

the survivors will gnaw bones and scratch in the dust
with sticks so meanings may live there tiny instants
like specks of seed in a forgotten sea

and night will dream its monochrome absolution
like an archaic priest who pretended
there was nothing with an essence

except one number; one, the number
of love and touching, the nothing
that comes




the children inside them

the children inside these people
have never been that Candyman royalty
no corpse expected to be forever,

and they have walked these morose waters
a fateful and patient waiting
where memory inheres in the earth

itself, the mud under us
weighing less than all the nothingness
all these children had to touch,

when they lived inside the people once

David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with dogs and cats and computers. In addition to six chapbooks, McLean is the author of three full-length poetry collections: CADAVER’S DANCE (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), PUSHING LEMMINGS (Erbacce Press, 2009), and LAUGHING AT FUNERALS (Epic Rites Press, 2010). His first novel HENRIETTA REMEMBERS is coming in 2014. During 2013 a seventh chapbook SHOUTING AT GHOSTS is forthcoming from Grey Book Press. More information about McLean can be found at his blog http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/