ROB MCLENNAN AT ANSTRUTHER SPRING LAUNCH AT POETRY PARTY
rob mclennan writes: “Five
poems for rheumatic fever” is part of a recently-completed manuscript “book of
magazine verse,” from which the poem in my new chapbook, Anstruther, a
history (Anstruther Press, 2020), also emerges. “Five poems for rheumatic
fever” was prompted from a visit my dear wife, Christine McNair, and I made to
the Niagara Region at the tail end of August, 2019 for a family wedding, where
we ended up in emergency because she didn’t feel quite right. She ended up a
week in hospital in Niagara, before being repatriated into the Ottawa General,
during which I had to already be home for the sake of our wee girls, one of
whom began grade one but a day after she was admitted.
rob mclennan
Five poems for rheumatic fever
1.
Edwardian,
she claims. A breakdown of the heart.
On the
Niagara Peninsula, a full day and night
in
Emergency; windowless shades of pale tan, fluorescence.
A
migraine onset, and this low proportion
of
energy: international normalized ratio,
automated
vending machines,
continued
pressure on the chest and brain.
Eighteen
hours in,
admission.
The same harmful
workings
as a pulse.
2.
Amlodipine,
nitroglycerin, warfarin. Traveller,
beware.
The Greater Niagara General Hospital: five hundred
and
forty kilometres from home.
3.
Shake,
and see
what
rattles. Blood test, tests; failed
IV
drip, another vein blown. As fine
as
silk, and impossible to pin.
4.
The
faintest scent of peach, pre-dawn: prepped
for lumbar
puncture, talk of meningitis. The evolution
of a
complex thing. Warm,
the
habit of air, our texts. This quartet
of
endurances. A high pain threshold.
Left
hand, lightly. Bruised. A third attempt for dye;
her Computerized
Axial Tomography scan
in the
Katz Scan Room, named for donors
with
impeccable humour.
After
seventy-two hours in isolation, her results,
a
strategy: viral, not bacterial. Repatriation of days
into
Ottawa General.
5.
Jennifer
Moxley: I can hear nothing
from
this shore.
rob mclennan would
have read this poem as part of the Anstruther Spring Launch in Ottawa on March
19th, alongside Ellen Chang-Richardson, also launching her own
Anstruther debut, with special guest readers Claire Farley and IAN MARTIN. "It would
have been totally fun!"
Link to
purchase Anstruther, a history (Anstruther Press, 2020): http://www.anstrutherpress.com/#/anstruther-a-history-by-rob-mclennan/