Dismantled, lodge
But how with gnarled hands holds the
many and how? The sun and shadow of Rhode Island? Let alone the earth?
Rosmarie Waldrop
1.
A strata, many
featured. Afterlife of trees. Streetcorner, dance. So barely noticed. Does, her
little move.
Arrangement, in the
teeth. Red daisies, diamond truck. My name is, not. Grammar. Red-winged
blackbird, curls. No one, possibilities. The room. We speak no, French.
Authorial, activity.
Barnswallow, trance. Poignant, and ephiphinal. Determined. Laurentian Hills, so
named.
My father, a distant
cousin in St. Marguerite, 1950s. Am I the last to know.
A talent for
arranging. Words, can't break. Imagine, her left hip.
2.
Sessional, cloud.
They come in curlicues. In, waves.
Hybrids, peaches.
So, you make. Misty expectations. August. What we try to, hold. Vowels, a lung.
An eighth troubled day. An undergrowth of bodies. Landed.
You were
significant, rail. Tethers, the bike paths. Written, from opposite ends.
Old age is its
voice. Invented, out of sight. Basement, cooling stage. The birdsong, insular.
Make tea, play guitar. Autoharp.
Pecked, out a
balloon. A red remark.
3.
A corporate appeal,
denied. The trap door, opens. Ultimately, appeared. A warbled, contradiction.
Cowboys, up a name. In French, les voyageurs. Hernias hold in, scarves.
Not to know our
time. Placing bones into the earth. A perfect, bit. They raid the biker hills.
As old as I am, now.
Porcelain, chops. Deceptions, wire. String.
The snow, precludes.
It is, only August.
mantle
« le jour où il l'avait rencontrée dans un champ
de fraises »
Un homme et son péché, Claude-Henri Grignon
3
August stings,
deceives, unravels. Under my feet the lawn corporeals, slides up and slips. It
circles round and there are trees and they are around and the windshudders. The
trees shudderflex. The rain bends the roof. Barely bearable, instep peels down
onto cold grass moves imperceptibly. The deck sighs. My feet are on the grass.
We labyrinth round. My buried dogs yip in the earth. They eye you cautiously.
The deer eat the flowers. The rain buckets.
2
The balloon store
has closed. All the puppets are lost. The crawl up the chalets at night and
hoof the sky. Howl and pull at the shingles. The balloons evolve into
jellyfish, luminesce, purr. Feral bicycles roam the streets, slick the medians
with coral. They are not to be approached past midnight.
1
Sainte not saint.
Feminine distinct. Adele stretches, yawns, picks at her teeth. Adele is the colour
of the sky. Adele is rambunctious and shivery. Adele is running in heels. Adele
shakes her braids out. Adele kicks the mountain. Adele contains the forest.
Adele bites the wind. Adele pushes her fists into the mud. Adele is the smell
of crushed leaves. Adele creaks the thunder. Adele turns the cross into an
earring. Adele hums a tune. Adele saves a pretty penny. Adele consumes peaches
by the bushel.
Prelude
My fifteenth
grandfather stirs at the mention of Rhode Island. Fluffs his wig and sleeps
miles away, where the trains no longer go.
*
Read rob discuss the collaborative process at Open Book http://www.openbookontario.com/news/sainte_ad%C3%A8le_redux
Christine
McNair's
work has appeared in cv2, Prairie Fire, ditchpoetry.com, Arc,
the Bywords Quarterly Journal, Descant, and assorted other
places. Her first collection of poems Conflict, is forthcoming with BookThug
in spring 2012. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa, is one of the hosts of
CKCU Lit Landscapes, and blogs at http://cartywheel.wordpress.com
Born
in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives
in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and
non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections A (short)
history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books],
2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011)
and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010), and a
second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs
above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau
Review (ottwater.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 http://robmclennan.blogspot.com
can i ask how the collaborating functions. for instance do you both contribute a poem, perhaps one stanza, then the other person the next? or do you literally write together? is one supposed to be a response to the last?
ReplyDeletei ask because a friend and i did a collection of villanelles. we used on line from the previous person's poem as one of the repeated lines. it came quite good considering we didn't the structure very well. we're thinking of doing this again so i'm curious how you are going about it.
so far, we are writing individual poems, & after the first one or two, we started using each other's to rework/rewrite in whatever way; im hoping that we get to the point that even those intimately aware of our individual work will have difficulty knowing who wrote which piece; i want our writing to actually begin to merge...
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