new from above/ground press: Things Musing, by Meredith Quartermain

Things Musing
Meredith Quartermain
$5

A Miraculous Platter

A giant china leaf – flamboyant green with bold ribs and veins. Scalloped edges. Eight leaflet side-plates to match. Guests oohed and aahed at its whole buttery salmon. I, the hostess, basked – at last I had style. But damn, my husband, drunk, barely vertical, insisted on washing up after the guests left. He chipped the flamboyant green against the sink, leaving a white patch along one edge. How could he not take care! Of this gift that had come with a scarlet candelabra from Robin Blaser. He of tuxedos, heavy rings, Italian loafers.
     I put away my flamboyant leaf, no longer good enough for dinner parties. But maybe I could find china-paint, colour the chip green, make my leaf good enough again. It needed research, phone calls, visiting stores, matching colour, buying paint and brush, setting up a place to work. Half a day or more to love my leaf.
     Our objects hail us, they hurl themselves against us. They are Latin ob -stacles + jacere to throw. Stop, we say. We are the subjects! You are mere objects. But they pull us out of their hats and throw us jacere-sub under their wheels. We bite the wheels. Such delicious rotae. We knit our own long woollen top-hats and pull them down over the rotae. We give these wheels panache.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the twenty-seventh title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
April 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Meredith Quartermain’s most recent book is Lullabies in the Real World (shortlisted for an Alberta Book Publishers’ award). Vancouver Walking won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. She is also the author of two novels and two books of short fiction: Recipes from the Red Planet (BC fiction award finalist) and I, Bartleby. From 2014-2016, she served as Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio program. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Prism International, The Dalhousie Review, Event Magazine, The Capilano Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, and many other magazines.

This is Quartermain’s fourth publication but first chapbook through above/ground press, following the broadsides “December 4” (#168, April 2003) and “Geography” (#225, 2005), and “Highway 99,” produced as issue #35 of STANZAS magazine (October 2003).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com