National Poetry Month : rob mclennan,

 

from dream logic

 

003 : “[untitled]”

This monster, a perfect rectangle. Howls of predictive text. The mammoth, is the only one. The centaur. A cloud, translated. As if suspicion. Townspeople, meanwhile. Unthinkable ethos. They walk up the hill, to the gates. In this letter, this serious thing. A consonant. A perfect circle. Let it begin with an unknown. Our findings, inconclusive. Anything you can grab by the heart. On the shores of Okanagan Lake. If you’re cold, they’re cold. Vixen, harridan. Bring them in. Is this how beasts. Neither bear nor moose. When you swim in the what. On the shores of Kenora, Lake of the Woods. On the shores of Loch Ness. It is time to come in. In the river’s slowness. It is time. Stretched along lakebed, a lie.

 

 

 

 

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 some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025) and the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.