HOLD
 

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“The poems in Victoria LeBlanc’s debut collection, Hold, are of exquisite, stunning  beauty. Eulogy and grief poems for her mother that transcend the personal shared as art.” 

Ilona Martonfi, author of four poetry books, most recent: The Tempest (Inanna, 2020) These poems were composed while simultaneously working on a series of portrait sketches that explore the same theme and arc of time: the slow decline and loss of a mother. (See Hold)

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Selected Poems 

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As if 

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In the narrow lane  

a sparrow flutters its injured wing 

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in its lair     an animal paws a way  

to earth’s  

ten thousand things 

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in a bed    in a room     down a corridor  

you flail the humid air  

as if to claw  

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an invisible hieroglyphic 

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bone thin your fingers roam your face as  

the blind roam  

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to know 

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dry lips    hollow cheek    eyelid  

ridged brow 

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final text of the palpable life  

a woman touching with fingered limbs  

as if to say 

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“like that” 

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bird of omen end of day knot moon  

bone  

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Silt 

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On my knees on the studio floor    I cannot find  

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umber grey green of river light  

sheen of mud film    slick sinuous reeds 

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silt in my throat 

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archive:    unmoving gaze outside her window  

spilled echoes on an old cloth she turns reaches  

for my hand  

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driftwood    small rocks you slip into your pocket  

swallows overhead    that line about her being offered up  rough bark    rain drenched    the colour you cannot name 

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beauty is a call

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Don’t say I come from nowhere 

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I dwell inside a word   inside a womb word 

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I dwell inside Sappho’s words 

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sweet mother I cannot work the loom 

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then a stanza is dropped  

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a woman at a loom trying to weave 

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what’s missing 

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guttural sounds pushing up    memories  

in exile    rupture  

in the sanctuary grounds  

face to the black earth  

to the sky 

don’t say I come from nowhere.

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