A Spell For A Husband

poetry by Amy LeBlanc

A spell for a husband

Take juniper, oil, rue, and turpentine
to place in a steaming kettle.
When the hairs stand on end
and organs rattle in their cages
write:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
on a piece of paper
and feed it to your husband
in a cup of warm milk and sugar.
Drive wood through the doors
like stakes through soil, but know:
if he has made a home,
he will not leave.
Grip carrots and parsnip roots
until they bruise and bleed
then grease the legs crosswise.
Tie the cloth of a man who has died
in July to the elm tree and wait
for the trampling hooves
of horses above your head.

•

Clamour

She felt like a body
in a moth-eaten corset.
She lifted her skin
and pulled it overhead.
She touched her hair
when the sky lit up,
ripened orange.
She fastened her claws and follicles,
dug nails into skin
to scrape away the filth.
She bled into the basin
from the slit in her stomach,
the itch nestled somewhere inside.
She stood in her handmade circle
counting lemons to bite.
She called from the foliage
as water sloshed through her arms—
in and out.
She tore at her tangled stitches
dropping tattered threads.
The children always went missing,
but no one guessed they were dead

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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. She will be attending an Emerging Writers Intensive at the Banff Centre for the Arts in October 2018.