from dream logic
008 : “Three Prayers”
If the wind would could
surge, and if could hear
the air flow; if the wind, wind
it can well be , the wind would
and the tides could , also , would
033 : “The Folklore”
A story we tell so that we might listen. So that we might know.
034 : “Two wolves”
I stood in the middle of the woods holding a wolf by a leash. The clouds all swirled red.
What did the wolf say. But the clouds. Perked up an ear, heard a sound from the bushes.
Perhaps a bird, a squirrel. He remained. The leash was brown, new. The sky indigo pink. I
think you were there. And then you weren’t there. The colour, red. The wolf asked for my
help. He told me his name. We attempted to find you. I howled, then. Was I also a wolf. The
wolf howled, also. How could a wolf hold a leash. The sky parted, then. Revealing the moon.
Where would one get such a leash. Red, it was red. I don’t remember the rest.
035 : “Origin Story”
A handful of photographs. I remember this. Revelatory. To integrate, letters. Into the page.
A book, of translation. Transparency. Of rigorous, form. The story, unwinds. A hairpin, a
flute. The truth of a phrase. We compose elegies, odes. Such tales of an island. This empty
room. Neutral. A theory of history. In miniature. Alternating, in age. This fiction is ludic. We
began, in the ocean. We began, in the dark. As nothingness. Memories, we rearrange.
Preparing lines. I read, but do not speak.
036 : “Leviathan”
At night, our grandmother transformed into a bird. The summer I turned twelve, I woke
early, and she was nowhere to be found. Her bedroom window was open, and the lawn was
aglow. Amid the shadows of dawn, even the walls had teeth.
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 the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), 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.
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