I Know Something You Don't Know

By Amy LeBlanc

Winner of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta's Emerging Artist Award, and shortlisted for the 2021 Alberta Literary Awards Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, Amy LeBlanc’s debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, resides in the intersection of folklore and femininity. With fairy-tale lucidity and fluid voice, the poems in this collection weave through the seams between story and fact. This debut collection is alluring and noxious like hemlock, foxglove, and blooming wildflowers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon Hill Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781928171997

Amy LeBlanc

Amy LeBlanc is a PhD student in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary. Amy's debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, was published with Gordon Hill Press in March 2020 and was long listed for the ReLit Award and selected as a finalist for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Her novella, Unlocking, was published by the University of Calgary Press in June 2021 and was a finalist for the Trade Fiction Book of the Year through the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. Amy’s first short story collection Homebodies is forthcoming in spring 2023 with Great Plains Publications in their Enfield & Wizenty imprint and her second full-length poetry collection, I used to live here, is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press in spring 2025 and Amy’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, Arc, Canadian Literature, and the Literary Review of Canada among others. She is the author of three chapbooks of poetry— most recently, Undead Juliet at the Museum, which was published with ZED Press in August 2021. Amy is a recipient of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and a CGS-D Award for her doctoral research into fictional representations of chronic illness and gothic spaces. She is a 2022 Killam Laureate.

Book preview

The Girl With The Matches

Wintering

He torched the skin

that I’m still in.

Counting Januarys—

I hold my hair

to sing psalms

and semi vowels.

The wasps bloat with

my belly in December,

gashing panty lines

and pot holes.

The burnt space will tear

from my hips.

I am a calamity

asking for armistice.

Night Apparition

In a filigree nightgown,

she stands at the edge

of the water carrying

a bloodflower and lady’s lace

as moths nip her collar.

The horses drink

poisoned water

with bloating sides

and floating specks

in their eyes.

She slits her lip,

shifts her insides

until she tastes blood.

In her limp grip,

the plants in her palms

swell with newfangled buds—

her rib bones are lined

with nectar and fastened

with an ivory button.

She has already learned

that the instrument of poison

is a hollow stomach,

but milk and cured petals

can hasten the spoiling along.

Powder

In the bloody pit they lower

one girl, one little girl

with a handful of matches.

When the ceiling tumbles,

the boys try to flee,

but hands hold them back

and they find their nostrils

sealed with a patch of black

ash. They clutch palms

to their chests, they build

rafts in the pit, but the girl

with the matches just sits and laughs.

A corvidae tumbles from the juniper tree

One magpie holds a corpse

flower in his beak

placing sorrow in my palms.

Two magpies search for mirth

dripping sweet cream

on my closed eyelids.

Three magpies attend my wedding

where moths unearth my veil.

They clatter their feathers

over the hand fasting.

Four magpies lick salve and salt

from my skin after birth.

Five magpies place boutonnieres

between my lips

and bear me bent pennies.

Six magpies lower a wreath

into my hair and leave

empty-handed.

Seven magpies look for a witch

pricking my freckles with feathers.

They can’t see my reflection,

in their iridescent plumes.

They leave the scent

of caramus or