Maureen N. McLane

Everywhere/todaythe irises insistedon waving their blue flags

Hairy tongued thingswith mouthshanging open

as if to fuck the air

O la la la spring& dying

the usual song

            ‘Every flower in a garden/is a sign            of a complete failure’            the landscape designer declared

Why...

From here you used to see the sea.The gulls still palaver the fishing boats still ekeout what they can. At dusk the Eastern Point Lightevery five seconds flashes white,the Dog Bar Light shines occulting red,the Ten Pound Islandevery six seconds blinks isophase red.These are their characteristics.So many beaches reefs and shoalsnamed for woes then woes effacedlike your footprint just now in wet...

A beach where dogs should be leashed but aren’t. Low tide strands the seaweed and two dead seals no one can call to help. There’s no one to call for help. A shore of men’s trash, twine, bits of mooring line, the house of what was once alive no I didn’t per se find my beach! but there was Brace Cove, Niles Beach, Good Harbour, Pavilion Beach if you like the...

after Sappho, Fragment 58

You who, like undergraduates, are always younggo in for the lyredo not neglectto put your hands in the air say WAAAAAAand wave the long night endless –As for me the dawn breaksupon my tender body turningstiff, my hair from black to white –I find myself changedin this light, my hips locked,an untwerkable ass.C’est la vie, que será –

And...

One day her sister asked Mz N to have her baby. This was intriguing this was frightening as there had been no babies come thru her & to have a baby not her baby seemed a strong hard thing to split the body for. Shitting a pumpkin is what a friend of Shulamith Firestone said in the late 1960s it was like. This birth thing This birthing The midwives were gathering a sharp-eyed coven...