Jacket 18 - rob mclennan: Five poems from monopoly / antiques

monopoly / antiques

fourteen hundred dollars each, & i
the milk bottle

wood replaces metal, or then
replaces glass

the rust comes over thru the rain

the implication is clear, if
your parents owned, nostalgia

anything earlier, an antique

she winds the victorola, & builds it
slow

speeds up to 78, until the belt
slips up

a hole where the rain

& from a young boys window, the eyes
then fill

monopoly / antiques

where every thru a pricetag, handled
down a notch

a teardrop, then

the hunting logic built, near
perth, ontario

the lines of river running thru
& serious land of lakes

the sound a falling log makes,
crackle

down a break on fours

the water up by how, a
measure

what once was sand

or “medicine”

in the grass, a long
lost bottle

monopoly / antiques

three red or two blue, a hotel
is not a hotel is not

little green houses, what once
were wood

an old game propagated
into fact, & fierce production

madness, & a girl-drink symphony
of noises

strawberries in the blender

there is no toothpaste
strong enough

turns around a balcony
of square boxes

the boathouse cabin, doors
open into lake

& shotgun blast to scare
the neighbours off

if only

monopoly / antiques

the last weekend we will ever
spend, looking

at old tractor parts

the rusted metal palm
of john deere model six

indented into memory,
& flesh

the treat out of the old car
withers

the carriage-house, a box
of doll-heads

brown couch left out
the rain, & suffered

a technology of dogs
& darker bone

monopoly / antiques

when you leave love, you spend
a long time in a foreign place

an essay written, circling intent

a hard edge crumbles in the rocks
& the birth of foreground

he writes an article on trains
& his third beer from the fridge

the friday or the monday

if this were intrinsic to a place
i cant believe she made

suggesting otherwise would we fly

worst-case scenario, a make-up
made of film

botched severance against, he goes
out swinging

deceptive to the times

rob mclennan is a young Canadian poet and editor/publisher. His sixth collection is harvest: a book of signifiers, and his seventh is paper hotel, published by Broken Jaw Press, Fredericton: http://www.brokenjaw.com/catalog/pg73.htm

He has edited STANZAS magazine and side/lines: a new canadian poetics (Insomniac Press). He is the publishers of above/ground press, and coordinator of the Small Press Action Network-Ottawa (SPAN-O). His website: http://www.track0.com/rob_mclennan/

Photo copyright © Stephen Brockwell 2002