Megan Leonard
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meganleonard.bsky.social
Megan Leonard
@meganleonard.bsky.social
61 followers 51 following 18 posts
book of lullabies (Milk & Cake Press, 2020), where the body ends (Platypus Press, 2017). Mad, sick poet & visual artist interested in lunch notes and sea creatures and witchy business.
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meganleonard.bsky.social
What I am reading RIGHT NOW (and loving): the new translation by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri of Kristin Berget’s collection, AND WHEN THE LIGHT COMES IT WILL BE SO FANTASTIC. A must-read for my eco-poets! #newpoetry #translation #ecopoets
June 5, 2025 at 6:41 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
So glad to have this poem in the latest SHADOWPLAY. This is from what I’m currently working on, a collection about family ancestry and what we carry with us in our bodies through the generations. It’s about anger, and witchiness, and also a lot of coastal imagery:
May 17, 2025 at 1:08 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Two poems in the latest edition of Sonic Boom -- if you love little poems, definitely read this wonderful issue and give Sonic Boom a follow. I loved every poem in this issue: it's giving jewel box, contemplation, quiet fierceness vibes.
Poem in simple formatting. Text reads: Finding A Forgotten Orange In Winter A sudden need, to hold the small fruit with your whole hand— so you stop slicing onions for dinner press your thumbnail into the bright skin. The sweetness has gone out of it. It tastes clear as though the color is gone and just laced with ferment— still you eat every piece leave the peel curled on the drain board, where you can see it then finish slicing onions. Brown them. Wash the dishes with pale blue soap. All evening— long after you’ve put the lamps on— you smell the faintest trace of grieving.  Poem in simple formatting. Text reads: Prescience every now and then while we are looking for our house keys instead we find glass figurines— checking yesterday’s raincoat pockets slipping fingers past a handbag’s secret zipper we feel a cool, smooth surface: little ponies roosters cherubic girls carrying buckets— their features rounded simple in blue grey sea-green glass . . . we line them up as they are found on the kitchen windowsill above the sink they wait for morning to angle through them— it’s as if they’ve always been there it’s as if we never understood a lock anyway
April 2, 2025 at 3:52 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Snowy day reading — absolutely loving this book by Melissa Fite Johnson. Gorgeous!
February 9, 2025 at 7:37 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
“It seems you’ve been looking out
One window, one moment all your life,
At the slant roof and trees,
While everything around you evolved,
Became something else.” — Cathy Song
ID: gold watercolor paint moves around a charred spot in the painting; ultramarine blue fills the edges in a choppy application. Two lines of childlike, “v” shaped birds emerge from the top and bottom of the page and exit to the right, where the charred spot is free of paint. Three thin lines of bubbles rises from the bottom edge to the top edge on the left hand side. ID: a piece of watercolor paper that has been burned at its edges creating a vaguely rectangular shape. Ultramarine blue invades a field of gold paint with long tendrils; two lines of v-shaped birds wing out from gaps in the paint, and a very short line of bubbles appears at the farthest left edge of the paper. ID: watercolor paper that has been burnt at the edges into a vaguely rectangular shape, with gold "u" shapes appearing against a field of ultramarine blue. "V" shaped birds wing out the cup of every gold "U" and two lines of bubbles cut through the center of the page. ID: stripes of gold paint fill the edges of the paper and a group of flame prints mark the center. Ultramarine blue edges the flame marks and a part of the paper that ripped. Lines of childlike “v” shaped birds fly around the flame mark, and two lines of bubbles rise from the bottom to the top on the left hand side of the page.
March 12, 2024 at 8:17 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Mermaid poems and mermaid paintings today 🧜‍♀️🧜🏾🧜🏼‍♂️

#poetry #watercolor #mermaidsarereal
A long, horizontal watercolor in blues, purples, greens, and golds, with three streams of bubbles emerging on the left and two lines of v-shaped birds coming out of the white spaces on the right. The right top and right side of the paper has been burned. When We Were Real Tonight I told every story about the mermaids that met me after a long search after travel through treacherous waters after losing hope then finally, finally finding me. I was utterly shocked, of course —not even knowing that mermaids were looking for me —I tried to be cool about it and also generous— they had come such a very long way after all— I’m told celebrity means everyone knows your name and you do not have to learn anyone else’s name— This is what I felt when mermaids appeared first in the corners of my eyes a flicker of tail flipping salt water drops against a white-out sun then later bolder sleek with heft and curve and slip waving to me from granite shoals coruscating in December light— Now my daughter says the rocks are like fairies, mama. I slap my hands —hard— A close up of the earlier painting, focusing on the birds and charred edge. Mermaids Everywhere turns out they are smaller than we thought not human-sized at all but minnow-sized which explains why no one ever catches one they glint right through those trawling nets no problem what lumbering submersible would even notice a school of them flinting past double-plated windows gazing for giant squid? but once you know what to look for the telltale silhouette you realize they are everywhere: shoaling through the shadows under a long pier scrimping the surface just ahead of a seagull dive puckering the bay like a brisk December wind— and elsewhere: on coffee giftbags tucked in stationwagon cupholders clipped to children’s hair tangled in leaf litter blown at the edge of the road forgotten then re-found in my husband’s trouser pocket. he pulls the mermaid out at a party his face lights with it twirls it between huge dry fingers: It’s my daughter’s!
February 21, 2024 at 6:31 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
more birds & bubbles
White watercolor paper with a V of birds in black ink moving from the lower right to the upper left of the page. Bubbles in black ink in two columns. Same birds & bubbles as previous image, and now gold paint has been added all around them. Same birds & bubbles and gold paint, and now red plant-like lines have been added along the bottom of the paper, kind of like coral.
February 12, 2024 at 2:34 AM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Feeling the crinkle and snap of smoke and burn and longing for color in this February cold.
Watercolor painting with gold paint that moves into black paint; paint is diffuse, with pigment moving through water. Black “v” shapes (like children’s birds) emerge from the gold paint and move across the paper. The right hand side of the paper is burned. Poem text reads: Burning         over and over again you see the same raccoon                                                                                  the same pileated crorcking                            its pterodactyl crorck trees mossing up the same superstitions                                 clouds darkening                                 with all the same delicate fears                      like flakes of ash floating up                                      clinging to everything                         weighing nothing—     we don’t know what they used to be we breathe them into our lungs Watercolor painting in gold and different greens. The greens emerge from the center of the paper like clouds, with the gold encroaching from the edges. Two columns of bubbles cut the paper in unequal thirds. A crooked like of “v” shaped birds emerges from the lower right and moves toward the upper left.
February 4, 2024 at 8:48 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
A poem for the new year — a wish for the new year.
Wish         I want you      to clean out the stable       —this will require mucking of course     but what I really want you to do is sweep   it down to bare stone           dulled blue by iron shoes &       weight shifting with contented huffs—   I mean I want you to sweep it down           past hay ground fine under tremendous weight,         I want you to sweep it down past dirt            & when you get to sweeping the last of the hay,         see how the floats of it mix with dust in sun        squaring up to the high, cut window:   there's a dead bat there on the floor        under the last layer of grit        flattened like a petroglyph    almost    unrecognizable    in two dimensions:      a shadow on the dull stone   where one creature crushed another while she dreamed         while the moon shone sharp through the square window           on a cloudless, good-for-flying night
December 30, 2023 at 11:35 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
So grateful to @swwim.bsky.social for giving a home to this little food-poem family-poem, just in time for this week of food-family-(feelings!) holiday. www.swwim.org/swwimeveryda...
Poem, in black text on white background: Family Story VI The recipes passed down include stale bread, one egg, a sip of milk, a little sugar. A potato cut four ways. My kids don’t know there is no money for syrup or meat or milk again. They say I am the best mom, the best mom, the best mom. I turn crusts into joy, I sing a bold song with my bad voice and the pan Continuation of poem from previous picture: is just the right heat. My kids dance, they silly all around the table, because I am the best mom, the best. I show them how to beat the egg, how to dip the bread just enough, tell them this is a family recipe. What kept my mother, my nana, her people alive—all this, all this to pass down. Screen shot of SWWIM EVERY DAY's November 20th poem, titled "Family Story VI" by yours truly <3
November 20, 2023 at 10:11 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Getting ready to read today at The Word Barn in Exeter, NH. Looking forward to being in community — working on these little paintings and readying my poems.
An assortment of small watercolor paintings in gold and color. Images are rough and not very skillful; rabbit, feather, snake with wings, pink lion with mane, and abstract forms.
October 15, 2023 at 4:56 PM
meganleonard.bsky.social
Feeling like a flattened ghost today 👻 so sorting through poems and paintings to try to feel a little more alive.
Poem text reads: Watercolor painting with cloud shapes, bubbles, and v-shaped (birds?)
October 13, 2023 at 4:50 PM