National Poetry Month 2016: rob mclennan,

Two ghazals, for newborn

1.

Map: for she articulates

our new, invented landscapes.

A declaration of staccato kicks

and wails.

A salted, sunny membrane

of gestures, squeaks and snorts.

Exhaustion, multiplied. A cavernous

desire: feral skin, and breath.

Newly birthed, big sister devotes

such rapt attention.

Monopolized: we have not

learned their language.

2.

Toddler’s outstretched arms,

convinced herself bigger

than she still is, asks: Let me

hold her. Two ducks,

three. The western shoal,

swift curl of seagull, her

newborn deep

and impenetrable.

The contours

of a shapeless day.

Their mother, relieved

she finally out.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan [photo credit: Breathe In Photography] currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. In March 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014), The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, 2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Christine McNair), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), 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). In fall 2015, he was named “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. 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 robmclennan.blogspot.com