1.
A
Sunday morning at Harbourfront Centre
in
September. An atmosphere
at
a glance: these fruit
the
size of demons. Book bins, booths
and
gift bags. Costumed, Clifford
the
Big Red Dog reduced
to
Clifford
the
Man-Sized Dog. Out of this wildness,
an
urban discourse, burghal;
abundant,
and strangely benevolent.
2.
Canadian
casual, based
on
systematic practice: authors, authors,
publicists,
booksellers. The inquisition
of
our limits.
Our
northern backdrop: sailboats breeze,
and
airplanes alternately lower, rise
from
man-made islands, stenciled across
a
bickering of contrails.
3.
Harbourfront
Centre: an organization
three
days older
than
my eldest daughter. Now,
these
literary market stalls, steeped
on
decades
of
deliberate fill. The foot
of
Lower Simcoe
extending
three or four blocks
from
original shoreline, lands
that
long housed
industrial
patter, planning, port.
Today,
the printed word
on
paper: a human object as obscure
as
shadow play, or silver stain
on
medieval glass.
4.
You
are the universe, pretending
to
be a great lake ; a calm
of
blizzard blue, cerulean,
across
this glacial basin.
Four poems for Word on the Streetby rob mclennanabove/ground press broadside #348
Born
in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives
in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with
Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction
and non-fiction, his most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019).
An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a
journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater
(ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my
(small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He egularly posts
reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
