Sugar Beach is my second chap from rob mclennan’s Above/Ground Press (the first was 2011’s If Leaf, Then Arpeggio). This one’s a two-fer — it contains minimalist poems from my manuscript R Is the Artichoke of Rose as well as material from the cosmic peregrinations of Blueshift Road, a work in progress.The title poem, “Sugar Beach,” gets its name from a white sand beach on Lake Ontario a couple of blocks from my home, with a view of the Redpath sugar plant; the cover’s Fragonard painting, “The Swing,” is a link in the poem’s chain of thoughts, along with a Smith & Wesson, a trapeze artist, and a black pigeon.
Click on the images or here to order a copy from Above/Ground Press. Reviews of the chap are welcome.
Below is a sample poem from the collection, “Endless Regression of Heavens,” first published by Similar Peaks magazine:
Endless Regression of Heavens
Glaciers dribble foreign rocks
as dawn releases chicory blue.
Its fickle hues waltz round equator,
spool, top, dizzy moon, gainlyas the patter of millipedes ruffling
toward a country with no flag
but fields of chicory blue. Horizon,
chromatic with moments. Whatof the next and the next, plunging
into myth evolving in the deeps?
Haunting the deeps while manning
the crow’s nest? With each finiteduration we arrive closer by half
to a famished constellation,
blinking beast perpetually devouring
a platter of chicory blue.
Camille Martin
Rogue Embryo 