Conditional Written by Andrew McEwan Published by Jackpine Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $15.00 ISBN 978-1-927035-17-7 Vancouverite Andrew McEwan’s Conditional, a saddle-stitched chapbook, contains two alternately playful and serious poems, or meditations. The first, “Spreading Sheets,” takes inspiration from a quote about stratus clouds, derived from an 1803 text called Essay on the Modification of Clouds (by Luke Howard). In the resulting text-which alternatingly appears on symbolically transparent vellum pages in a free verse style and on gray cotton pages in prose poem blocks-the poet asks “what is this fog?” Fog, here, is up for interpretation. The author alludes to Vancouver’s “visibility issues,” and hovering mainland\mists,” to condensation from the bathroom mirror,” and perhaps also to the fog of human thought as we wait in queues, “cannot see the object of our mourning,” and listen to financial and real estate market forecasts. Or perhaps it is none of these. McEwan keeps us entertained and guessing with disparate thoughts. “Of the animals seen today only the blanket of crows migrating past reads as symbolic,” he writes. And in the next two lines: “A rezoning is in progress. Everything is on sale except for the waterproof outerwear.” This first poem registers…