from FAIR BODIES OF UNSEEN PROSE
Not and knotted. Vesicles.
Ardent, the lip of it. Grammar. Coined the phrase. The hand, touches. Anyone, listed. It was
late in the evening. It was always in question. It was singular, second person. It was spring. It
was in the folds of pre-existing material. Opaque metal, the fragrance. Sit, motionless. I was
sitting, seated. I have these concerns. So many were. I could tell in an instant.
as the lingual route to love.
At the speed of descent, steep and soluble. So, mistaken. A gold-plated standard. Collapse. I
kept my proxy in constant motion. Fluttered, percolated, indeterminate. Dwarf stars, and the
brain’s incessant activity. The ground swells, swept. I was winded by then. With all
atmosphere, high in the breeze. A continent, links. Yet we surface, entangled. This small,
electric current.
So the remedy is to amend personhood—how?
Impearled, imperiled. This coverlet, blossom. Approach. A season of land green and
tangible, children. What crosses the pupil. This nesting, descent. To be born through the
breastplate. Mechanical, skiff. A curtain, a bridge, a mayflower. Spread beyond, edge. What
churning, resilience. Slippery. Less obvious at night. Motion. Trips the sensor. Irresistible.
Leaves on the trees. I have broken the line. As was my intention.
, in need of a cup of linden tea.
In turns, garment. Rectify. To express a relation. Copper, copper, blood. Arbitrarily. Write it,
lengthways. Compose branches. Continuous, measure, ripen. Gravity. This, constellation.
What the eye might encounter. Beaten, bound. What light, falls. Fallen. Locomotion. Tilt, to
the sun. Upon which one stands.
Your faithlessness would not reach all the way to your face.
Uncompromised intensions. Beyond, tense. A liquid plane. Secretly, of burdens. A fly on the
carapace. Ladin, speak. All leafiness, and young. What we know of these hills. For all that
beauty. Heaven, mostly. Inflection, the voice. A word to impose. Turreted, trees. A damp
towel, blade. This uttered sound. Must keep in constant motion.
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 more than 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 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. 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 anthologygroundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) andTouch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. 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.