Patricia J McLean

If we put them end to end all the naked men
all the naked emperors from the first
in earth’s history to the last
they would circle the globe.
A million moons shining up at the sky
their mouths full of dirt
their penises sticking into the soft earth
and their anuses would be singing
reaching for a high note
describing their glorious raiment
their illustrious careers
how the people loved them and how
they changed the world.

Patricia J McLean lives in Bend, Oregon. Her work has appeared in various publications including Windfall, The Lake, Panache, and Trillium. She and her spouse, Duane Poncy, have collaborated on three novels, Degrees of Freedom (2025), Ghosts of Saint-Pierre (2022), and Bartlett House(2007), and are working on their fourth novel. They established Rainy Nights Press in 2003, editing and publishing Raising Our Voices, an honored anthology introduced by Ursula K. Le Guin and Judith Barrington. The press published Navigation by Brittney Corrigan, Red Dust Rising by Marilyn Johnston, Like the Sun in Storm by Ralph Salisbury, and Eye of the Moon by Australian author Shelly Davidow. Beginning in 2012, they published Elohi Gadugi Journal, an online magazine of poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. They co-hosted the popular poetry series Readings at Milepost 5 (Portland, OR) for five years. Patricia’s website is poncy-mclean.net

This poem appears in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.