Hold Hands With the Dead
Once my sister wanted to be a mortician, wanted
to hold hands with the dead and guide their bodies
to the grave. When college was out of the question—
grades not good enough, test scores scraping bottom,
piggy banks shaken empty—she learned taxidermy
instead, took a weekend course and started stuffing
small creatures: birds, rats, once a prairie dog.
Eventually she moved on to another way of honoring
death: collage art made from the bones and feathers
she found while hiking, a backpack full of sticks
and rocks, flowers that might dry pretty,
the carcass of a bumblebee, fat and fuzzed.
Now she maintains a death garden in her backyard,
a space for the bones she finds to rest while nature
finishes its job of cleaning away every scrap of hair
or hide. Her neighbors must think her crazy,
this woman with ink running up her arms,
hands full of bones, her face tipped toward
the sun, thanking the day for all it’s provided.
Not Like This
The first thing she thinks when he wraps
his hands around her throat is how easy
it has been, to breathe. An involuntary
action without any thought from her.
Now, as she digs her nails into his hands
her body begs, Breathe! He lets go before
she blacks out but not before she wears
a necklace of fingerprints. She shows me
the pictures over coffee, tells me how
the next time he tried to hurt her,
her 15-pound dog got between them,
wouldn’t let him close, kept his teeth bared
and hackles raised. She tells me she hasn’t
seen him since the last time he tried
to hurt her but I know her well enough
to fear she will forgive him. I recite
statistics: once a woman has been strangled
by her partner she is 800% more likely
to be killed by him. I tell her I love her.
I tell her I don’t want to lose her. I tell her
I don’t want to write poems about her.
Not like this.
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize); Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. Her next collection, Her Dark Everything is forthcoming in April 2025. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com.