Splashed Things

by Leigh Lucas

Splashed Things is a raw, dark humored, and deeply moving collection that examines the chaotic terrain of grief following the suicide of an ex-boyfriend. With startling honesty and emotional precision, Lucas navigates the speaker’s journey through loss as a woman in her 20s, revealing how grief infiltrates every corner of her life—from the funeral home to a dead-end job, from the therapist’s office to the subways of New York City.

These lyrical poems search for traces of the lost in unlikely places—the physics of splashes, the history of seasickness, the science of depression—while confronting the limitations of elegy and the futility of trying to contain sorrow in words. Splashed Things is not a neat arc toward healing, but a testimony to the unwieldy shape of mourning and the persistence of love in its wake.

Selected by Maya C. Popa as winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize for its emotional courage, inventive language, and haunting beauty, Leigh Lucas's Splashed Things marks the arrival of a powerful new voice in contemporary poetry.

Genres: Poetry

101 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2026

Reviews

[Lori Applegate]

Amazingly, bravely and brutally honest...thank you so much Leigh Lucas for sharing a snapshot of the hardest part of your life. There was so much that spoke to me all throughout this collection of poems and made me feel a little less alone. Again THANK YOU! Definitely a must read!! #goodreadsgiveaway

[ayd]

one of my fav poetry collections i’ve read. honest, heartbreaking, and almost the echoes of a fredrik backman novel. happy i had the privilege to hear her read at AWP

[Renee]

4.5
I loved the wry sadness and dark humor of Splashed Things. I loved that she did not title her pieces, reminiscent of Dickinson and Mackenzie Kozak's no swaddle, like the book was intended to be read in one sitting with the poems constantly and closely in conversation with the others. I especially loved Lucas's wordplay as well as the writing risks she took when discussing the landscape of grief after a former boyfriend's suicide.

A delightful surprise: I also loved the mostly-paragraph-form verse, with some variations that kept the poems interesting (See especially: p. 23, 44, 58, 76). My favorite: a poem that mentions boxcar containers, where the author used a portion of the poem to resemble what she would put in her containers, using the words themselves (63). Brilliant.

Sold as a book of poems, Splashed Things very easily falls into the hybrid category and more than earns its place on my "hybrid" shelf. :) This is a book I look forward to rereading.

[Perry Janes]

"Not to preserve him exactly.

Not to forget. Eye pits, no eyes.

Maybe the aim is just to come out from living in this room between he and not-he."

This is a striking collection of essayistic poems orbiting grief, and a kind of rebirth, all the more forceful for their spareness. By leaning into a journalistic mode that favors internal monologue and avoids narration, I felt this is a book as much in conversation with the poetry of Sarah Mancuso and Anne Carson as it is the prose of Jenny Offill and Michael Ondaatje. A powerful and propulsive read.

[Margaret]

Splashed Things holds tremendous power, humor, and hope as it plunges into the seemingly unfathomable depths of grief. Here, Lucas creates an original taxonomy to hold, analyze, and even metabolize those depths, dexterously knowing when and how to resurface or shift that taxonomy to mirror the speaker’s processing. This book is an intimate and vulnerable testament to the impacts of mental health and how love survives, however fragmented at times, even after loss. Beautiful.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern]

If grief could be said to be transcribed Splashed Things would be it I imagine: matter-of-fact and deeply personal; sparse prose stanzas and minimal lines of striking beauty that "ebb," "leach," "creep," "drip," "drag," "foam," "lift," and "heave." These latter, the headings of the eight-part collection, could equally be read as nouns. Their sequence and choice underscore a sense of movement, intimate and secret, in an unresolved ambiguity while ceding the field to grief and wherever it may go—a surrender, profound and healing.

[Annie Abbott]

I ordered this book because Leigh taught a course on creating a morning writing practice that was transformational for me, so I wanted to support her and read what she had been working on those same mornings. The poetry is inventive (playful doesn’t seem to be the right word because of the difficult nature of the subject matter) and shows the reader grief in myriad forms.

[Miriam]

An extraordinary, heartbreaking journey, and a book to share with anyone who is grieving or understands what it means to lose someone you love. Lucas is an incredible writer and I loved this book so much.

[Megan Pinto]

Beautifully rendered. This book breaks my heart while making me laugh. I can’t wait to return to it.

[Gary Roberts]

Wonderful read, the words just flowed and flowed. Once I started reading could not stop until I got to the end. Reflections on life and a life that was.

[Vicky]

What a beautifully depicted journey through grief

[Lindsey]

A beautiful and heartbreaking collection of poems. At turns aching with grief and at others finding the dark humor in it.

[Oscar Gomez]

I empty my pockets of odd little flyers and tear-off numbers for pest solutions and local handymen. I save them; some may prove critical at the end of the world.