Christian McEwen was born in London and grew up in the Borders of Scotland. She is the editor of NAMING THE WAVES: CONTEMPORARY LESBIAN POETRY and OUT THE OTHER SIDE: CONTEMPORARY LESBIAN WRITING. Her most recent anthology, JO'S GIRLS: TOMBOY TALES OF HIGH ADVENTURE, TRUE GRIT & REAL LIFE will be published by Beacon Press in June 1997.

Christian's poems, essays and reviews have appeared in Granta, The American Voice, The Nation and the Voice Literary Supplement. She has worked as a writer-in-the-schools for ALPS, City Lore, and the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She also teaches poetry through the Creative Arts in Learning Program at Lesley College.
LANDSCAPE WITH CHILD
(after Paul Klee)
The child is so small 
you hardly see her

She crouches in the corner 
with the roses

The scrawny trees bear twigs 
with eyes like candles

The child is frightened 
of their ghostly faces

She does not trust 
those strange transparent houses

their roofs like witches' hats 
or tall church steeples

She keeps her distance 
from the amber windows

wrapped like happy packages 
for Christmas

She craves the small blue house 
beyond the fir-trees

where no ghosts cry 
in thin insistent voices

the little tilted house 
without a window

where she can shut her eyes 
and dream of roses