National Poetry Month : Amy LeBlanc,

specimens found in a homemade biorepository near nose hill

Specimen #1: a note

          taped to the ceramic tile,

          moist from your thighs

          and a shattered bottle of olives.

          The note reads:

          I'll open all of the windows

          until the rain floods this house

          and your room is full of salmon

          that got lost crossing the street.

          The moisture is swallowed

          by an untidy dish towel.

Specimen #2: a wasps' nest

          is fastened to the awning

          and fattened with wood:

          dried wasps

          and headless spiders spread

          as the boy throws it like a handball,

          like mouldy papier mache

          to line his bedroom walls.

Specimen #3: a veil

          ruptured and corroded

          from the baby's breath

          in the yellow bell jar,

          the cloth is propped on

          wire clothes hangers

          bent to the shape of a skull.

Specimen #4: a birds' nest

          leans on the bow of an evergreen

          full of shells and tinfoil.

          Inside, it hosts

          a silver earing in the shape of a fish,

          a cufflink with the initials D and W,

          a fingernail painted yellow,

          a notice of impending disease.

Amy LeBlanc is a writer and editor from Calgary, Alberta. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine and is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press (August 2018). Amy’s debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press (Spring 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, Geez, and EVENT among others and she was recently long-listed for Room Magazine’s 2018 Short Forms Contest. She will begin her MA in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary in fall 2019.