Conduits

Amy LeBlanc


They say she lifted the calf from the bed
like a coil of rope, unspun and curling
with unsung sea salt through the sides of a boat.
He did not cry bubbles like a spool of thread.
instead, the water wept from his back,
the same shade of grey as a smoke stack in winter.

They say she held him for sixteen months,
she’d carried him over a year.
She keened underwater where no one could hear
the slaughter of her marrow or the ticking of a clock.
The cascading waves could not take him away.
to her, he weighed no more than a shell.

They say her cartilage ached from her passion play,
the labor of days spent crawling through water.
When her swollen body refused to sleep,
she packed his things and swam for weeks.



Amy LeBlanc holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Her work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and EVENT among others. Amy won the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest for her poem 'Swell'. She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press in August 2018.