the goddess is everywhere,

and her carnality incarnated

nowhere;

she is the meaning in the meat,

and the reasoned brutality

of feeling,

she feeds on memories

and is never replete, whole

lives complete themselves

in her shared stomach, the food

we live through, and her loving

claw is the sword

that pares down hope to the sallow bone.

she lives her own forgiveness through us,

mad as the night, wishing well

the hell in heaven, and hers the axle, strong

knowing shoulders whereon revolves time,

hers is the children's innocence and crime,

hers the time, its timely coffin

dead already inside

each "mine"

David McLean has nearly 375 poems in or accepted by 167 publications in print or online since December 2006. Details may be found at his blog: http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/. His chapbook, "a hunger for mourning," has been published by Erbacce press and is on sale at Lulu (find it here: http://www.lulu.com/content/1338495). He has an electronic chapbook forthcoming from Why vandalism?, and a forthcoming full length book with Whistling Shade Press due in 2008, entitled "Cadaver's Dance."