The Plains Speak Grief
By Courtney LeBlanc
October 15, 2022
October 15, 2022
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It’s easy to get lost here—with nothing
but wide open a person can wander for weeks without finding shelter. Men have plowed and planted, hoed and harvested, been nurtured and broken by this land—it’s not always my fault but if a farmer doesn’t learn grief early he’ll never make it. But the other side of grief is love and I’ve got that in spades too. I’ll bless that 4am wake-up with a fuchsia sunrise. I’ll give that late night chore a blanket of stars pulled tight across the sky. And long after that farmer has sold his tractor and held the last shafts of wheat between his fingers, I’ll give him a soft breeze against his sun-darkened skin. I’ll stretch cerulean like a quilt across a summer sky. And during the last week of his life, when his daughter can’t sleep and he’s clutching at breath from the hospital bed, I’ll give her the most brilliant sunrise she’s ever seen. I’ll paint the sky magenta and violet, I’ll show her the brutal beauty of grief, I’ll let her tears water the thistle that grows wild in the ditches, and she’ll know I’ll hold him in the earth of my hands and he’ll be home. |
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, Write Bloody, 2023), Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). She is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow (2022) 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. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.
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