Jenna McClelland

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Gnossiennes
Excerpt from “Gnossienne no. 4”
Read Gnossiennes in Arc Poetry.

“I bowed to the Moon, to the labyrinthine waters that reflected its light, sewn in and out like a quilt complicated by colour as well as luminescence. The waters that hold everything but do not dare reveal their secrets—a locked safe. To this I bowed, letting my hands graze the long grass.

“Time here is compressed, and time here is also stretched toward a center that moves with the focus of the eyes. Serpentine tree trunks produce a new face with each eye-browed ridge, curled mouth timber, graceful heights—this is my kind of company! The grass provides too, expanding as the breath of the earth exhales, and builds anew again—the soft, soft grass, that grows longer by the cliff’s edge, creating a finer bed, or a warning sign for unstable ground. The swirl of each element, like a tightly packed crowd at Carnivale—the breath, the motion—the dance! Mania, a ritual that will never be disturbed.

“When I looked back the way I came, my sight was impaired—so long did I stare! —and everything was blacker than it was previously, darkness with added depth. I walked back to my own locked front door and once inside, began to steam the broccoli, retrieving the meatloaf from its cool shelf.”

The Young Ladies of the Telephone
Chapter One from the novella Estuaries
Read the full chapter in La Piccioletta Barca.

“The morning was heavy, and could not be forced open, but would need careful fingers to peel it back like the buttery skin of a mango, which would make Leo a fine breakfast once she left her seat at the round table of her dreams.

“The night, holding a second life, does not rely on the senses, but instead on a language that is located in the radiant rim around. That this vision is understood is one small part. That a smell or taste or sound can forge the breaking of the dams and begin the flood once more gives this invasion an eternal hue, as it spreads from its starting point into neighbouring limbs. The residue is heat, without sign of fire—fingerprints on a pane of glass—sunlight hitting skin.

“In the molten substance of dreams, Leo could not feel the contrast. Each voice, each vibration entered at the same decibel, braided together as one. Her own voice could not defy these terms, either, becoming one instrument in the greater orgy of bright music.”

The Virtues of Elevator Music: On Eluvium, Ambience, and Transience
Read full essay in La Piccioletta Barca.

“Although art is not the only method of communion—religion and sex are two other prominent doorways—music most organically mimics the flow of a closed circuit current. In music, beauty, anxiety, and revelation all permeate the skin without the skill or intention of its listener. Courtney Love slides through my veins at a dark hour; Elizabeth Fraser, without words, sings of the ineffable and joyous; Enya, the philosopher, attempts to answer complex questions. These are some archetypes of modern music, and, latent, they break through in prompted moments, to close the circuit, and reconvene our feeling to an external source, and back again.”

Excerpt below from “Houseboat Days (A Preface): Messina.” Read the full collection at Nowhere Magazine.

‡

I am blessed to wake up to the sun’s rays directly on my face, Mount Etna’s smoky peak, Branko tuning his acoustic guitar, no predictions of breakfast except by Maggie’s disappearance and what I have learned on other, similar mornings: you are staying with Canadians, and we will share pot after pot of coffee.

Huge swells of the first night kept me largely awake, rocking back and forth while I tried to find solid grounding—at sea, the constellations are what fill you. The swells have never been this big, the whole time we’ve been sailing. It’s a new moon, a lunar eclipse, Maggie said. Branko said there must be something at sea. Autumn’s grey solstice.

I pissed in buckets, just to stay out of the boats’ interior, where I would be locked in again (at sea, the constellations are what anchor you). I took gravol after gravol everytime I woke up my first night, returning to the only position—a near fetal pose—that the curve of the stern allowed.

An ancient town overlooked my sleeplessness. I could see Taormina from where I rocked, could see its lights and monastery and dry slopes that made it resemble North Africa. The same ruins I would stare into the next afternoon, excavated in light, after coffee and cards and swimming, music. The same ruins that boasted of amphora’s, statues—statuettes—anchors, and earrings—if Maggie was a jewelry designer, she would base her craft on the earrings in Taormina, she said. The same ruins that showed me my first fig trees, olive trees, avocado and banana trees.

Maelströms: A Prose Collection
Excerpt below from “Houseboat Days (A Preface): Messina.“ Read the full collection at Nowhere Magazine.

‡

I am blessed to wake up to the sun’s rays directly on my face, Mount Etna’s smoky peak, Branko tuning his acoustic guitar, no predictions of breakfast except by Maggie’s disappearance and what I have learned on other, similar mornings: you are staying with Canadians, and we will share pot after pot of coffee.

Huge swells of the first night kept me largely awake, rocking back and forth while I tried to find solid grounding—at sea, the constellations are what fill you. The swells have never been this big, the whole time we’ve been sailing. It’s a new moon, a lunar eclipse, Maggie said. Branko said there must be something at sea. Autumn’s grey solstice.

I pissed in buckets, just to stay out of the boats’ interior, where I would be locked in again (at sea, the constellations are what anchor you). I took gravol after gravol everytime I woke up my first night, returning to the only position—a near fetal pose—that the curve of the stern allowed.

An ancient town overlooked my sleeplessness. I could see Taormina from where I rocked, could see its lights and monastery and dry slopes that made it resemble North Africa. The same ruins I would stare into the next afternoon, excavated in light, after coffee and cards and swimming, music. The same ruins that boasted of amphora’s, statues—statuettes—anchors, and earrings—if Maggie was a jewelry designer, she would base her craft on the earrings in Taormina, she said. The same ruins that showed me my first fig trees, olive trees, avocado and banana trees.

On Aurélie Noury’s “How I Didn’t Write Any of My Books”
Read the full review here.

“Noury’s essay is an ultra-violet light to the literary canon’s invisible ink. How I Didn’t Write Any of My Books sharpens our focus on negative space, the work that ‘could not be written down on paper,’ the empty bookshelf, the unfinished manuscript, the pulse of life that remains in embryo, ‘filling far more than pages, but entire lives.’

“The labyrinth of books not written — both in the lives of fictitious characters and ‘abstinent authors’ — is an ensorcelling concept, touching on what is intrinsic to the artist: ‘a work is also everything that was not.’ Noury writes an almost encyclopedic inventory of this counter-literature, underlining the means by which works like On Dandyism by Baudelaire, or the manuscript of Robert Serval in Perec’s 53 Days, works that have not, in fact, been written, create a Rubin’s vase in the literary realm. Siphoning completed imaginary texts into the Lorem Ipsum publishing project, Noury writes by reading, as ‘to create out of one’s readings is paying off one’s debts.'”

On Jordan Bolay’s “How to Make an English Exam Interesting.”
Read full review here.

“Bolay scans the room for the comical meat of poetic supplies: ‘two blue exam booklets / to blue exam booklet: / I’m sorry this isn’t / a better poem,’ reflects the absurdity of the exercise — homophone phrases cannot overcome the lackluster blue book. Similarly, ‘some War of the Roses reference / we didn’t re-cover Shakespeare / in this class,’ alludes to an impish attitude toward the canon of literature.

“The height of Bolay’s work comes in his game of jump rope with Žižek, ‘our objet petit a / our caffeine-free diet coke,’ is the integrity bag, a practice that Google tells me the University of Calgary uses to titillate its young.”

For more work by Jenna in Broken Pencil, go here.

“AndreW WarholA”
Co-written with Sasha Zack
Published by Reality Beach.

“Horizontally Piled Clouds”: An Interview with Paul Herron of Sky Blue Press
Read full interview in The Ex-Puritan.


“Anaïs’ writing is the current between land masses; a tendon connecting bone to muscle. That she bridges a gap for the biological sexes is one true interpretation. Another rides on the conviction that within each of us is a man, a woman, and a child in infinite oscillation. According to Nin, ‘the child is usually an orphan. So we have a tremendous task to do: we have to take care of this orphan in ourselves and in others; we have to act out our creativity in every moment of our life.’


“Another more sublime truth sees an internal infinitude of selves to elude definitions like man, woman, and child, and these inexplicable elements through Anaïs’ writing are given space to remain as mystery. The blossoms above ground bloom, wilt, then bloom again; the rhizome remains underground, rooted.


“Anaïs’ work is in the recognition and disintegration of external divisions; her writing portrays people so deeply that she moves beyond judgement into a more nuanced realm that requires conscious feeling and thinking. The dynamism of the human psyche, for Anaïs, is the admission of multiple forms at once, stacked high: to live symphonically.”


Touching Modigliani: My Patti Smith Pilgrimage
Read full essay in Audiofemme.



“Shadowing Patti’s ascent, I am where you were, is that first light of creation; culture is no longer a shield when one finds the doorways to communion. The deficit I encountered in my post-collegiate days now appears to me as a necessary gaze inward. This gaze, in its present moment, appeared in hues of escapism, a thin skin distant from something much more insidious: that of nihilism. The abrasion of punk is twofold – it is destruction, and it is creation. It is the blank generation, it is the void sublimated; it is absolute freedom, it is that nutrient which offers illumination, it is filling (fill me! fill me!).”