new from above/ground press: Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep, by rob mclennan

Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep
by rob mclennan
$4

Vancouver, specifically
for Wayde Compton,

An uneasy mist
rises from this calligraphy of recollection
-- Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedecker: Poems


1.

What is this, beauty. Failed attempts at, something. Stated aims, a viaduct. Specific questions, abandoned. Linger. Exploding at the bedrock, crust. Backwash, a church. A Union, Prior. Streets. A common grave. Or is it, grace.

Impossibilities, suffer. Excised, but not divide, subtract. A family path of clothespins, buttons.

You aren't front lawn, sophisticate. Subsets claim. A learning made of kitchens, home. A Georgian demolition, sweep. A lack of rumoured slums. Estate of longing, else. State, desired looks. Wood sliced into beam, a streetscape. What aren't we seeing.

If less abstracted, tell me. A community suffers, scattered. Brow to leaning brow.

2.

Attempts are not, but statements. Lone survivor, speaks dead language. Restorations. Memory, buffers. Erodes into allotted land. A formless quilt, afforded. Question, its effects.

Mortgage is, but this. Your murdered laughter.

What are we, looking? The look of elsewhere, less. All that glitters. Little controversies, pass the stupid buck. Strathcona is, a name. The trees for city, same. The house but not, paved over. Why did you, did? Could further, else. A glaze.

Of, the shores. What oxidized. Go. Here, not only. Long, into the east.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2012
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (www.ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (www.ottawater.com). He 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 www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com