Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, Rob Mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of over a dozen trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the novella white (2007), the travel book Ottawa: The Unknown City (2008), the non-fiction titles subverting the lyric: essays (2008) and Alberta dispatch: interviews & writing from Edmonton (2008) and the poetry collection a compact of words (2008). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), Poetics.ca (with Stephen Brockwell, poetics.ca) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He recently spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.
You know this climate like the shape of your hand inside your mitt;
increasing numbness (face licked with cold, ice-slick
questions on your tongue, answers
fewer than you have fingers to count on), familiarity
an avalanche
waiting …
— Sylvia Legris, Nerve Squall
Surely you remember the legendary earthquake.
— Joshua Marie Wilkinson, lug your careless body out of the careful dusk
It is simplicity at last.
But what a complicated way of getting happy again.
— George Bowering, "Old Standards"
*
move a subsequent dream ; poetical
& street serene
I am wonder
out loud ; ground your feet there beneath
I am hastily, silent
processional, starved
& seeing stars ; fools & ethics, wonder
would you burn from a bridge ; or lapse
the water stone cleft down to bone
every language is a barrier
*
the weight of geographically weighs
to watch you sleep
again & again
the car is soluble ; water
permission-logged
the way things fall; a pregnant pause mis
carried
again, the skin
of sudden vessel
would undergo a rapid
increase in conductivity
; where would I take my
many-splendoured
*
if I am remarking tedium recording
the falling rock
smashing bone & bare branch
; hardening
or octaves, how to build
if I am more ash than complex pressure
or stamen
carlost ; a string field
pulled marionette length of stage
a coral sight bleed
I am raw heart at once on the page
if I am wearing my hurt
(today)
like a badge
*
the palm of wooded hand ; the properties
of sun, moon air
second scent
or spread ; would take
as manual
but would you avalanche you would
; a fruit-fly stand in doorway
under tables, desk + chair
protecting face
*
where is then & art ; a magnificent
outpour
malignant grief strength is stronger
pre-hensile;
study of cable wire & the car
where your body would erode
me
moon-mark, article of then-descent
we are marco, polo, marco stand
ing there in the water
waist-deep, wading
a secular art
*
dear roy kiyooka,
I know all abt endings
& the terminally begun ; have stood
on that back porch keefer street where once
your pear tree grew
; each unit
a lyric, grown outward you cant step into
the same river, they say
but still soaked down to sock & shoe
; have unconditionally
loved & broken, blown ; have learned
as much forgot
; creating from a simple line
a mystery
& loving all else
*
is guts & glory ; hardly
score a snow mass
come down, descending, go down, fall
hardened
, the rock face lifts
(is not afraid)
& separates ; do you remember yesterday, you said
the sum an avalanche the rain
; is everest, worn a quick picture
window swells
my hands went up & fell again
would break out then the unmeaning of you
*
according to these calculations
if the colour of rain I deliberately spell
w/ a "u"
is shape as well
a landmass of gardens, dulcimer
& mingled measure
would overcome
artifact of cool spheres
lemon standard of your eyes ; dangerous
& still
another hour would ;
slide
*
a complicated reel
; large lean of falling
&/or sliding material
; arrange my days at elbows
event that happens, long wind
to a love
like a pie left to cool
a breeze persists
over lake of two mountains
am standing between doors
; you would yellow leaves your hands
a sudden appearance of an overwhelming number
of things
*
if break in the gait; move downward
& lower
not necessarily all the way
a horoscope of generous
trees ; that left, my hand
your raised pink blouse
; would send & scatter, ginger root
the whole of avalanche, restraint
the true show of power, & power
in spades ; if
or would
let loose, instill
a crash or hammer fall
to shake the rumble free, in
still a storm of gravity
or thin as a whisper
*
the moon is a crater & fills
; my empty spaces
of snow in the mountains
the plums on the window sill
are only pears
a sudden radiance
of natural event, a happening descent
engulf, or carry off
what would we crawl
*
the main break in definition ; being overwhelmed
not under
stitch arrival of somesuch
in overwhelming quantity
; stand a field
of avalanche query, slip theory
the roll
& rubble dawn, material slide
a slope of empty
single kiss
& how the rest of you
tastes
to dress & undress, repetition of states
or to end on an open question
*
to become one ; a hardened break
, I would haul your body out
(what were they saying)
, my orpheus
would never turn or doubt ; functional
a song made up of two, three phrases
; composed soil, rock
no time but the next time
(I didnt want to leave)
; the phone you save my
twenty messages repeat
; the world as an empire
built of big plate sky
*
a poem of beginnings ; at the top
of incremental ski
down devils hill
(I am breaking contingencies)
; the barometre fell
, into each life rain
a body rife w/ collisions & a cellphone false
electronic bells
an avalanche of what, snow
marries hard at the highest point
, sudden shower think you
in my standing stall
a testament
to all the weather we lived
*
this indeterminate state of small psalms
& inevitable ends
made fragile
as if not spoken to
; this mess of correspondence
spread out a tides wave, start
w/ a single line
by what you would
be afraid
; am late in the day & so
electric checkmark
as a kinder gesture drawn, still knows
*
from the pit of the stomach, a same song
; hardened across bare bone
all acts
are political ; or if sleep in the summer,
wintermitts are wind in trees, love
half beaten somerset mark
the break in the day you would widen
; a house in the sun
or the dark of the lane where the basketball hoops
dreams the ground out from under
you : would be fingers & toes
& can guess how it goes
*
the morning sun tears out ; a travesty of light
& light bearings
in a year of ten thousand shades
how to number when the chinese
or hebrew so different
arms will spread out a dragon drums
nanny goat hill
; how can we know?
when the greeks still hold christmas
a full two weeks later
; the victoria day weekend
I wait to overcome
& to be
*
dear unnameable,
I have run out of things to tell you
; all possible cloud etcetera
the rock that all foundations
envy ; slow on the long road
is a passage of heart ; if I
had a diary, I would write out your name
avalanche : a fundamentally stretched
become misshapen particle
; it is easy to mistake one for another
all boundaries & silence
what a wonderful display
(I imagine you radiant,
knowing full well you are)
or conjoining a calm explosion, finally
