some author activity: mclennan, MacEachern, Burgoyne, Macdonald + the ottawa small press book fair,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Shadows and Sax; catch Jessi MacEachern and Sarah Burgoyne in conversation via Canthius; Dawn Macdonald has a new essay up at The Wood-Lot; and today is the ottawa small press book fair!

some author activity: Aube, Kemp, Kronovet, Earl, Wells + MacEachern,

Gwen Aube has new work up at Maisonneuve; Penn Kemp has a new poem up at Centred.ca, and there's an article on her work in the London Free Press and new work in The Typescript; Arlington poet laureate Jennifer Kronovet took part in a recent event in the county; Amanda Earl has a long poem up at Canto; Christina Wells offers reading recommendations via The Fiddlehead; and a poem by Jessi MacEachern lands on the Room Magazine 2026 Poetry Contest Longlist.

some author activity: Clayton, Niespodziany, Sikkema, Earl, Levy + MacEachern,

Conyer Clayton is included in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at HAD; Michael Sikkema has new work up at Antiphony; Amanda Earl has new visual poems up at talking about strawberries all of the time, where John Levy also has new visual collaborations with Shloka Shankar; and Jessi MacEachern has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month.

some author activity: Archer, Barwin, Spinosa, Dachsel, Betts, MacEachern + Vitkauskas,

Sacha Archer has some visual work up at Arnold McBay's mOvement, as does Gary Barwin, once or twice, and Dani Spinosa; Marita Dachsel has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Gregory Betts is interviewed at The Ethically Immoral Podcast; Jessi MacEachern is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

some author activity: Chang-Richardson,Witek, mclennan, Kaplan, Eleftherion, MacEachern, Moure + Houglum,

forthcoming author Ellen Chang-Richardson answers the '12 or 20 questions'; forthcoming author Terri Witek is featured in the spotlight series; rob mclennan is interviewed by JWT BookAdventures; Genevieve Kaplan has work in the latest Word for Word; Melissa Eleftherion reads for the DMQ Virtual Salon; Jessi MacEachern answers four questions for Erín Moure via YouTube; and did you see that Brook Houglum is the second in the new series of author spotlights over at the above/ground press substack?

Jay Miller reviews Jessi MacEachern's Television Poems (2021)

Montreal poet, translator and reviewer Jay Miller was good enough to provide the first review of Jessi MacEachern's Television Poems (2021) over at Bibelotages. Thanks so much! You can read Miller's original post here. As Miller writes:

This [past] weekend in Montreal, Jessi MacEachern, author of the 2021 above/ground chapbook Television Poems, will be launching her latest work Cut Side Down. It’s a party and you're all invited.

Her publisher, Invisible Publishing, describes Cut Side Down as “a false autobiographical engagement with desire and memory,” and could, by an elongated stretch of the imagination, be seen as a technical extension of the approach used for Television Poems, so now seemed as good a time as ever to proverbially crack the thin stapled spine of this deliciously purple book of poems.

On her Instagram, MacEachern has an excerpt of a review by Manahil Bandukwala in Quill & Quire for her début poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, also 2021, and also with Invisible Publishing, which reads:

MacEachern taps into what poetry does best, which is to bypass logical explanations and dive into an emotional core that here sings of strength above all. Whether the poems aim to draw attention to the interrupted nature of a gendered existence, or uncover a beauty to be embraced in deconstruction, the collection brings a new dimension with each read.

These poems, each of which captures a TV episode wherein poetry is featured in a manner the poet herself describes as “ekphrastic,” speak to me. Granted the suspension of disbelief (Coleridge!) as to why this review is not appearing sharply at 7 am for my newsletter subscribers, quite honestly, I was enjoying a triple feature of Mrs. Doubtfire, My Spy, and No Time to Die with my partner till the wee hours of the morning last night, and am now throwing aspirin and coffee back listening to FKJ do some funky stuff on the keys in “Live From The Greenhouse” to take my time and give Television Poems the attention it deserves.

Suffice it to say, media rules everything around me. Curiously, MacEachern writes: “After all, television is also an art form. It has no national month (as far as I know); of course, this may be because it doesn’t require the publicity.”

When I think of TV, I can’t help but think of Twitch City, a two-season CBC show from 1998-2000 starring Don McKellar and Molly Parker, and, at the time of writing, is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube. Don McKellar’s character, Curtis, is (more specifically than a TV addict) a Jerry Springer addict, although the show uses the stand-in of Rex Reilly for Springer in the series’ fictional canon. He is a fanatic and his unwavering love and admiration for Reilly exemplifies the surrealism of Toronto existence in entirely unexpected ways.

If Montreal is Canada’s ekphrastic city par excellence, Toronto is very much Canada’s surreal city ipso videlicet demonstrandum.

Bref, Jessi MacEachern may very well be to ekphrasis what Don McKellar is to surrealism. Hold my pineapple cookies.

The first poem in Television Poems frames an episode of Taxi. I'm a big fan of Judd Hirsch personally (a big fan of Numb3rs actually), but I never watched Taxi—lots of big names and, more importantly, lots of acclaim. The Wikipedia for it says “widely regarded as one of the greatest television shows of all time” and I’ll have to take the internet’s word for it for the time being because I am an uncultured swine who has literally always never seen that thing you’re talking about. Pretend there’s a salient New Yorker comic between these two paragraphs to illustrate my point about competing listmakers of movies and physical TBRs.

The remarkable thing about MacEachern's poems, however, is that each page has a TV-like window filled with words on every page in the chap:

Photo of first poem in Television Poems, to demonstrate the "TV-like window" that appears in each one in the book.

 

A lot of full episodes of Taxi are available on YouTube but I am only seeing a clip of Danny DeVito for the episode cited for this poem.

On that inspiring note, this poem is full of bangers:

    flowers sun themselves
    looking costs little more / than opportunity
    Into the garage rushes the not-yet-famous actor. Next rushes studio laughter. It sets off a chain reaction. Andy should have known this.

Magnificent. No notes. Jessi MacEachern knows ball.

But I’m not gonna shy away from writing about poems if they’re based on shows I don’t know, that wouldn’t be right.

The next poem is “She Was a Maid of Cleopatra” based on Inside No. 9’s “Zanzibar” episode. I have quite honestly never heard of this show, either, and it’s been on for the last 10 years.

The whole episode is in iambic pentameter and is directed by David Kerr, who’s also done a dozen and a half or so episodes of Mitchell and Webb.

The poem: all iambs. And I’ve gotta hand it to her, they are as sumptuous as calembours:

    You’re stressed. I’m not.
    Daddy, get the knife.
    I am sleeping now.

I have to go back and re-read it two, three times to bask in it, recite it with an RP accent in my head where the emphasis hits correctly. Stunning. I’ll try not to speak like an Islander now.

The following poem is about the pilot episode of Little Fires Everywhere. This series (I strongly dislike the nomenclature “mini-series,” quite frankly, but it’s eight episodes long) is based on the novel of the same name by Celeste Ng and stars Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. In the first episode of the series, so much happens I feel unqualified to paraphrase. But MacEachern’s poem here is titled “The Words are Purposes” which has a special allure to it, being a poem:

    The artist’s daughter twirls
    in the lens of the camera
    held by her mother’s leaning out

    The window is white clapboard
    the boy is a white child who asks
    about the line of poetry in the air

    I came to explore the wreck

    One wall turns blue
    the white mother makes an attempt
    places her hand in the child’s hair

    Repulsion is hair burnt black compulsion
    is the exact measurement of 125 ml
    of white wine

    The television star pulls in sympathy
    he is the favoured parent

    The television star maintains his standing
    in white briefs the artist’s daughter
    is stopped by the size of it

    The house it is a magnificent testament
    to generational wealth

    The artist’s daughter accepts the whipped
    potatoes from the older brother
    she is stopped by the size

    The bird in the throat

Then, in the box in the upper right-hand corner of the page:

    The answer comes
    with blaring sirens.
    What is shown has not
    happened yet. In the
    next moment is the
    present disbelief. Guilt
    sparks a second riot.
    The spectacle is the
    closeness.

Little Fires Everywhere has all the complexity of an ancient myth but is set in 90s Ohio.

The thing MacEachern gets about ekphrasis and TV is that these poems work like Easter eggs: if you’ve seen it, know it, and then read the corresponding poem, it can be a portal of discovery. A sweet treat. Some poems I can only appreciate at the level of craft because I employed the same technique for 90s PC games for my 2023 chapbook Virtual Lands: MS-DOS Series, with a slightly different execution, but the intents overlap enough for me to get where she’s coming from as a writer.

Do they not have a similar effect, though, if you haven’t seen the series? I can’t make good on my word in the midst of writing this review (in media media res) by copping out saying, “I’ll totally watch it now!” but does it not make you want to see it now that you get this extra layer? Read the novel, watch the series, read the poem: you are now a completely different person. It’s not necessary, we owe the poem nothing, but the possibility lingers. What else is on? Don't flip the channel.

The remainder of the chap (spoiler alert) delves into the following series for a trove of poetic souffle: Sex and the City, The Leftovers, Lovecraft Country, Call My Agent, ER, Mad Men, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gilmore Girls, The Get Down, Transparent, Buffy, Parks and Rec, Roseanne, Dawson’s Creek, Breaking Bad, Dickinson, Simpsons, Deep Space Nine, Better Things, Bob’s Burgers, Ramy, Fargo, Avatar, and finally West Wing.

So, take a show I’m most familiar with and dissect it, shall we? I choose The Simpsons, naturally (she actually has 2 Simpsons poems in this chap). I grew up with them, in an era where most kids’ parents wouldn’t let them watch grown-up shows like that. I never saw the issue. I remember once getting judged by my parents for sneaking into the basement to watch an episode of Barney & Friends in 1999 (never again); and I get it. Compared to peak Simpsons, Barney was not good brain food. It's like Robin Williams said in Doubtfire: don't play down to kids, just play to them. It’s like the 90s TV equivalent of that scene in Ratatouille where Remy teaches Émile about taste. And MacEachern, for all my faults, undeniably has it.

Towards the end of her book, MacEachern writes a Simpsons poem for the episode “Behind the Laughter,” a VH1 parody episode.

How can I not share it? I’ve already printed two of MacEachern’s poems above. I can only resist the urge by writing my thoughts: this is the perfect fan service poem, it incorporates lore while depicting a non-canon episode, while also making room for the dénouement of the episode taking place at hand, and pays homage by way of relying on classic Simpsons tropes like casually dropping crossword-like words mid-dialogue: Gates were closed to the father. / That night, fate wore a cummerbund.

Literally a word I heard Bill Hader use in a clip this morning I saw on Instagram, describing his younger self as looking like Charles Manson. Which then leads MacEachern to what I consider the pinnacle of the poem: Gin, evergreen cash, piles of loose caviar. It perfectly encapsulates the episode and the series all at once. I exhale deeply before concluding my review. I have to.

You may remember me from such poems as...

    Take a Penny, Leave a Penny

    The father is weeping
    while the son receives a shoulder massage,
    a manicure, a foot rub and says yes.
    Learn the secrets
    of rising and falling.
    Swing then rock, rock then swing,
    dissolves into musical argument.
    The dream was over.
    The town in Somewhere, USA
    was put on hiatus. As a young female artist,
    begins the young woman. She is
    cut off by the television,
    always the parental figure. Was the dream
    really over? It was.
    Gates were closed to the father.
    That night, fate wore a cummerbund.
    Backs were turned. But is it
    really over? It is. The red braids lift.
    Will things stay the same? Gin,
    evergreen cash, piles of loose caviar.
    The clown is not the father
    but he is embittered and old.
    Behind the streamers, the family rises
    and falls. The clouds,
    the opening shot,
    Somewhere, USA.

Then, in the bottom right-hand corner of the page:

    We are overly familiar
    with the wife from the
    very beginning. The
    daughter has a face
    streaked with saliva,
    not her own. It’s meta,
    the way real life enters
    the television script.
    Firehouses of respect.

In my ultimate fantasy crossover, my friend Shawn Berman and Jessi MacEachern would do a crazy collab. It would go so hard.

Because, at the end of the day, this chapbook represents a machine that Jessi MacEachern has invented, in the sense that it has a mechanism: pick a show, find poetry literally mentioned in it, and turn that episode into a poem, and don’t forget to add the poem-within-a-poem. Ostensibly infinite in potential.

I was watching Deep Cover the other day and Jeff Goldblum literally quotes Delmore Schwartz, one of my favourite poets of all time, mid-conversation with Laurence Fishburne. I totally freaked out. So it occurred to me: you could always break the rules and reinvent it, include movies for example, and expand the possibilities, truly without end.

I look forward to reading Cut Side Down. Jessi MacEachern is a gem. In an alternate timeline where Elon Musk didn’t acquire Twitter, this review would have been live tweeted, minute by everloving minute. But if they ever invent time travel, I would gladly go back to 2021 to do so. It was a gorgeous read. Thanks for tuning in.

some author activity: McNair, Hawes, Saklikar, Bell, MacEachern + Armantrout,

Christine McNair has added a rare new post to her blog; James Hawes has a poem up at SQUID; Renée Sarojini Saklikar is interviewed in the 5 Questions series by Finnian Burnett; Wade Bell offers his own piece on filling Station for The Typescript; Jessi MacEachern has new work up at the ex-puritan; and Rae Armantrout has a poem up at The London Review of Books.

some author activity: Houbolt, MacEachern, Inniss, mclennan, Jirgens + Beaulieu,

Kyla Houbolt has a new poem up at The Pi Review, as does Jessi MacEachern; Scott Inniss is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; rob mclennan is interviewed by Jamie Tennant over at his podcast; and Karl Jirgens offers an homage to Aritha van Herk, Fred Wah and Derek Beaulieu as part of acknowledging thirty years of filling Station magazine via The Typescript.

some author activity: MacEachern, Levy, Solomon, Smith, Dolman, Clayton + Baker,

Jessi MacEachern has new work up at the Spotlight series; John Levy has a new poem up at The Pi Review, as does Misha Solomon; Mahaila Smith answers some interview questions for Angry Gable Press; and AJ Dolman, Conyer Clayton + Jennifer Baker were interviewed yesterday on Friday Special Blend for their reading later today at the Kemptville Branch of the North Grenville Public Library.

some author activity: MacEachern, mclennan, Archer, Heroux + Barwin,

Jessi MacEachern, nina jane drystek, rob mclennan and Sacha Archer (among others) all have work in the final issue of Carousel, which also includes an interview between Jason Heroux and Jerrod Edson; and Gary Barwin is on the inaugural League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Award shortlist.

Poetry at the Avant-Garde (Ottawa, June 1st): Jessi MacEachern, Stuart Ross, & William Vallières

Join us at the Avant-Garde Bar to see Stuart Ross (Cobourg), Jessi MacEachern (Montréal), and William Vallières (Montréal) read from their new poetry chapbooks from above/ground press.
Hosted by Bardia Sinaee.

Thursday, June 1, 2023 : Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa
Event starts at 7:30pm.
Admission is free.
Chapbooks will be available for sale.
See the Eventbrite link here

About the readers:

Jessi MacEachern is a poet who lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal where she teaches English literature. She is the author of A Number of Stunning Attacks. Her chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is her second chapbook with above/ground press.

Stuart Ross, winner of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, is the author of over twenty full-length books of poetry, fiction, and essays. Bird Snow on Hard Tracks is his third above/ground press chapbook. Stuart’s work has been translated into French, Norwegian, Slovene, Russian, Spanish, and Estonian. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Event, Grain, and Plenitude. His first book of poetry, Versus (2019), is out with Véhicule Press. His chapbook, Poor Rutebeuf (2023), a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, is out now with above/ground press.

Event banner artwork by Barbara Caruso.

new from above/ground press: When a Folk, When a Sprawl, by Jessi MacEachern

When a Folk, When a Sprawl
Jessi MacEachern
$5

The ready-rot of consciousness. Keeps my nose cold

Three of us rode.


Whose rough-guise. Whose road-gyre

The smoke made it so


The wuzz-or-whir. The monologue will not revive

My memory of her.


Three of us drove. The night’s machinations


For twenty-eight long days. It was only May

The stench visible. In the glass


Would the lilacs be in bloom

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jessi MacEachern is the author of the poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, as well as the chapbooks Television Poems (above/ground), You Do Not Like Animal Sounds (Ghost City), and Ravishing the Sex into the Hold (Model). Her new poetry collection Cut Side Down is forthcoming with Invisible in 2025. She is the 2022–24 reviewer of Poetics for Oxford University Press's The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Bishop’s University.

This is MacEachern’s second above/ground press title, after Television Poems (2021).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) 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

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day two of five: MacEachern, Heroux, Vallières, Webb + Drescher,

Furthering yesterday’s post, as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. I mean, offsite means offsite, right?

Jessi MacEachern (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, as well as the chapbooks Television Poems, You Do Not Like Animal Sounds, and Ravishing the Sex into the Hold. Her new chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is forthcoming with above/ground press in 2023 and her new poetry collection Cut Side Down is forthcoming with Invisible in 2025. She is the 2022–24 reviewer of Poetics for Oxford University Press’s This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Bishop’s University.

Jason Heroux was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of four books of poetry: Memoirs of an Alias (2004); Emergency Hallelujah (2008); Natural Capital (2012) and Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines (2016). His recent books include a short fiction collection Survivors of the Hive (Radiant Press) and two poetry chapbooks: New and Selected Days (Origami Poems Project) and Something or Other (above/ground press).

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Grain, and Event, among other places. His chapbook Poor Rutebeuf, a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, just appeared through above/ground press. His first book of poems, Versus, is out with Véhicule Press.

Lindsey Webb is the author of the chapbooks House (Ghost Proposal, 2020) and Perfumer’s Organ (above/ground press, 2023). Her writings have appeared in Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and Lana Turner, among others. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she is a Steffensen Cannon fellow in the PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

Julia Drescher is the author of OPEN EPIC (Delete Press, 2017). Her above/ground chapbooks are BLATTA & Metastatic Flower (2020). She lives in Colorado.

2022 NELSON BALL PRIZE LONG LIST : Hajnoczky, Harder, McKinnon + Weaver!

It is exciting to see four above/ground press titles (and three further above/ground press authors) on this year's longlist for the Nelson Ball Prize! Congratulations to all! Oh, and be aware that all four above/ground press titles on this list are still totally in print, yes? As the press release offers:

We're pleased to announce the Long List for the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize, as selected by our dedicated judges, Beverley Daurio and James McDonald. The judges read about 100 submissions of books, chapbooks, and ephemera, looking for the best in "poetry of observation" by a Canadian poet.

Stay tuned for the Short List! The winner will receive $1,000, thanks to our generous donors.

Here is the Long List of 10 titles, in alphabetical order by the poets' names:

Lines – Cameron Anstee (St. Andrew Books)

Undoing Hours – Selina Boan (Nightwood Editions)

wind – Guy Ewing (Puddles of Sky Press)

a grain of sand – Helen Hajnoczky (above/ground press)

Zero Dawn – Shelly Harder (above/ground press)

A Number of Stunning Attacks – Jessi MacEachern (Invisible Publishing)

Gone South – Barry McKinnon (above/ground press)

Rain's Small Gestures – Pearl Pirie (Apt. 9 Press)

Ghosthawk – Matt Rader (Nightwood Editions)

So/I – Andy Weaver (above/ground press)

some author activity: Naughton, O'Reilly, Burgoyne, MacEachern, Collis + Siklosi,

Katie Naughton is interviewed in the new issue of Red Weather; Nathanael O'Reilly has a new poem up at Marathon Lit Review; Sarah Burgoyne interviews Jessi MacEachern over at Canthius; Stephen Collis is interviewed over at the Canadian Literature Podcast, "Getting Lit with Linda"; and Kate Siklosi is interviewed over at Artisanal Writer.

some author activity: Archer, Collis, MacEachern, Niespodziany, Mody + The Free Nashville Poetry Library,

[above/ground press items seen in the wild at The Free Nashville Poetry Library; photo by Megan M. Garr] Sacha Archer is interviewed over at Artisanal Writer; Stephen Collis has a new poem up at the scales project; Jessi MacEachern has a new poem (audio and text) up at Vallum magazine; Benjamin Niespodziany has some new work up at Blue Arrangements; and Monica Mody has a poem up in the Tuesday poem series over at the dusie blog.

some author activity: Mohammadi, Barbour, MacEachern, Coulton + Robinson,

Khashayar Mohammadi has some new translations of poetry, by Shahin Sadeghzadeh, now up at Asymptote Journal; Edmonton Journal publishes an article on the late Douglas Barbour; Jessi MacEachern is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Valerie Coulton has begun to curate a new series of free pdf poetry chapbooks, palabrosa, which recently posted a new title by Elizabeth Robinson.

some author activity: O'Reilly, Joseph, Mavreas, Tate, Betts + MacEachern,

Nathanael O'Reilly is interviewed over at Fevers of the Mind, and has a new poem up at Beir Bua Journal; Alexander Joseph has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; a CBC article on Montreal's Billy Mavreas closing down his "curiosity shop and art gallery" after twenty years; and Bronwen Tate, Gregory Betts and Jessi MacEachern all have new work online at Carousel magazine.

some author activity: Joseph, mclennan, Moore, MacEachern + Dowling,

Alexander Joseph was interviewed for Boulder Jewish News; rob mclennan has posted a new poem to his blog, and another at Watch Your Head, and a further at Train : a poetry journal; Nathan Alexander Moore is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Jessi MacEachern participates in the "12 or 20 questions" interview series; and Sarah Dowling is co-editing (with Jane Malcolm) a special issue of Amodern, tentatively titled "Body and/as Procedure," and seeks critical papers!

new from above/ground press: Television Poems, by Jessi MacEachern

Television Poems
Jessi MacEachern
$5

Uncorked
Bob’s Burgers S4E17, “Eggs for Days”

The question we should be asking is:
Do you see the egg? Look up
“racoon, babies, wall.” Drive out
the mother with audio harassment.
From crawl space to family restaurant,
the voices groan. Three small faces look
up into the mother. The anger grows with
the stench. Nose hairs twitch like gnats.
A childless man emerges and runs
to the ocean. In steel bowls, we
divide our spoils. In the single-
occupant gender neutral bathroom,
we hide our feelings. Three small
faces open up wide; the result is profound
silence. Schnapps pours freely, pink sludge
in the bloated guts of our guardians.
The hangover cuts into the holiday
like a crime scene. Nostalgia
seeps into us; we recognize
the three wicker baskets, feel
the synthetic fibres against our palms.
Soon a headless bunny will stand in
the yellow straw, a sweet sacrifice.
“Sensational Gardens” combats rot,
the signature scent of a New Jersey
celebrity falls flat into decay.
Three small faces merge
with stars, a manly offering.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jessi MacEachern lives in Montréal, QC, where she teaches English literature. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in CAROUSEL, Touch the Donkey, Poetry Is Dead, Vallum, MuseMedusa, Canthius, PRISM, and CV2. Her debut poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) 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