Michael McAloran's In Damage Seasons by David McLean (Book Review)

In Damage Seasons by Michael McAloran
Reviewed by David McLean

Here is one of Michael Mc Aloran's best attempts to do what he does so well, kicking round the scattered teeth of sunlight in a darkened room. The book is divided into scenes that articulate a dismemberment of the drab conventional, and that paint red what already was always painted black.

          "the amputated limb with which one child beats the other the arm torn away to break the bones
          of dissolve in dislocation of tears here a ravage there a ravage the nicotine stained teeth and the
          breath upon…"

          "there is no sun or better yet we have swallowed the dead cum of absence the swelling meat in
          the mouth clasped down upon till castrative screams echoing violently the bloody dead meat of it
          spat out into foreign excrement…"

The poems are the insistent echo of pointless and life behind the grind of hunger, cum-stained memory, the splendid array of absences and almost forgotten we carry within us like a well-tended garden of cancers.

There is, after all, no denying the beauty and appositeness of lines like:

          "torn out the fingernails yet ever on till severed pulse of the snare of it hacking in cold corridors
          warped from one wall unto the next till crimson…"

          "snap snap the fingers snap snapping till ritornellos of the absurd a dressage of crushed bone all
          afar until yet spun in widow’s teeth of claimed verandas…"

Mick's poetry, in a sense, is an angry railing agianst not so much the dying of the light, fuck the light, but against words not working any more

          "baseless till tongue to sever-bite in the none of speech the clamour in the echoing chasm of    
          vibratory steel drawn in excommunicable lights deadened yet bustling never ending…"

The none of speech might mean that which is unsaid, it might mean the saying of the none, or void, something that is usually done very wrong by way of horrid hypostatization among the burgeoning insincere nihilists, it might also mean the emptiness and absurdity of Gerede, idle talk, running on and meaning certain things, just not the essential and important.

And what is essential and important is the tooth of hunger, it is the obstinate bone, it is the scattered teeth and the insistent emptiness of discourse, and thus the bok ends, perfectly logically and correctly, with:

          "collapse unto thy dread for the good of nothing claimed none but the shit clinging to the heels
          it was ever of the all for silences the rapture emptied silenced silenced it was all for the good of
          nothing claimed"

This book is very good: get it here:

Paraphiliamagazine

Author bio:

David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with partner, dogs, 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/