rob mclennan

from GLOSSARY OF MUSICAL TERMS

The Key of G

Sans serif, slender. These painted moulds. Small pistons fire, transcribing sentences. A social mantra. Key of speaks. A hotel room with sparks. So joined, sojourn. Smallness, small. Tell me: who are you. Tell me what do you know.

Composed in real time. A beautiful, horizontal multitude. We were there from the beginning. We are there.

Two things at once

Thing thing thing thing: has no more shelf space left for moments. We possess.

Persuasion. Sick, with fear. Accordingly, a soothe. Express. We limit. Needles, needles, squeal. Discouragements. A charred, request. Delight. The cells do what they please. We ask you.

Shocked, a sour. Trebled, cleft. A Baltic climb. Debt: is it right to ask your doctor? Midwife? Push into the fence, a crooner. Cry. This song begins to tear, tear out.

The Key of E, Minor

I am patient, body, but a phrase. The difference, key-teeth. Ratio. The circle, glances back. Recapitulate, slow capital. Polytonal, we. These poor, bright species. Calling, northward. Mind the old lamp, gap. These unsane moments, hands. We parcel.

These leaves-hunched squirrels. The song remembers: all.

The Key of C

Daily, we would rockface. Absolute merit. Cheerful, missing digits. A frigid, numbered phrase. She spirals, singing. Tonal. Softly, pedaled. I am seeking I.

Would carve a verb from hardwood. Sleepily. Harmonic, swimming. Dunk the baby’s head. Escape, notation. Bring the think down. Bedding. Cricket, cricket, window, door. We tighten, hesitate. All laughter, bubbles.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly 30 trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010 and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press 2014) and The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books 2014), as well as the forthcoming poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks 2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). 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