Reviewed by Blake Chapman
Splashed Things
by Leigh Lucas
Boa Editions
May 2026, $US19, Paperback, 101 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1968507039
There is nothing more certain in life than love and loss; How someone’s entrance into or exit from our lives makes us reconsider ourselves is a part of the human condition. Frequently, romantic love and heartbreak are discussed as a package: the departure, and associated emotions of sorrow or anger, melds into the wider mythos of the relationship with little chance of reconciliation. It is less often that we contend with the death of a former partner and how much of an effect their absence can have long after the connection has ended. With her debut collection (published April 7, 2026 by BOA Editions), Leigh Lucas navigates those tough questions about grief we are hesitant to answer: how do we choose to remember a person, what objects outline their absence, and when do we start to remember those we lose as more than just the loss?
The collection opens in the aftermath of tragedy–the suicide of a former boyfriend–with an introduction that carefully withholds the particulars of this relationship as they are slowly revealed to us over the course of the next eight sections:
In my new life, I must learn everything again.
My friends are patient. They gather my coat and bag and say, let’s
get something to eat.
More and more, I manage on my own, lift my arms to wash my hair,
thread my legs through underwear, speak a bit when spoken to.
Nights
Are each the same.
This flinching and shielding of the most delicate aspects of romantic partnership or meaning making is a thread woven through the entire collection as more is gradually revealed about the nature of this relationship and the context of his death.
The cacophonous physical space of New York City stands in contrast to the exploration and investigation of the small images or subtle reminders of him. The opening section closes with The man I love jumped off a bridge and The man I love taught poetry; a pair of poems offering a mirrored glance at who he was and how he made an impression on a bustling metropolis:
The man I love
Jumped off a bridge on September 30th at 4 in the afternoon.
—
The man I love
taught poetry
to college students and kids at the Y.
He left a storage unit filled with duffel bags of paint, a city-wide
scavenger hunt of bad graffiti, broken-hearted parents, a sister, and
me.
This duo, presented side-by-side on the page, is the first moment the speaker pushes through that hesitation to reveal all this partner was and still is for them while replicating the falter in their voice through a quivering form. That slow disclosure, progressive confession, and pushing through the urge to flinch is done with finesse as more vulnerable aspects of this process are revealed: resentment, anger, and obsession. All of which brings us into closer contact with the speaker as a poet and person.
What makes Splashed Things such a strong collection is the utilization of the visual metaphor of splashes and water as an explanation for loss and grief. From poems on the physics of splashes to Doc Edgerton’s photography, Lucas returns to this again and again with grace and poise, such as the penultimate poem of section II: A splash is a sudden disturbance. She writes,
Impact speed, shape, and weight factor into the depth of the air
cavity. The cavity collapses inward under the pressure of the water
around it. Water rushes to fill the cavity and in the rush, excess water
shoots up and out. This is the jet.
The larger the cavity, the bigger the rush to fill it.
Humans, as far as objects go, are hydrophobic. This adds to the
splash.
With delicate explanation, we see that a splash is not just about what was lost (a body or object piercing the veil with such force that the impact is explosive) but it also involves the spread and how that absence reverberates out from the initial impact through time, space, people, and all manner of things that go on living or merely existing.
That acceptance, coming to terms with the impact this loss has had on the narrator’s needs and desires, and moving forward with stability, is at the center of the latter half of this collection. They go to therapy, begin dating again, and reveal more intimate details of their former relationship. This allows for some unique experiments in form, such as Discussion Question: What did he stand for, and deeper descriptions with Then like that, we were together always–one in a six-poem series that draws the sharper details of this relationship’s intimacy and brightness through breathtaking recollection while serving as the collection’s climax.
That said, Lucas’ debut collection is at its strongest when her poems pull away new layers of the grieving process or feature a strong focus on that aforementioned metaphor and accompanying imagery. There are times when that narrative slows and the motion through the
collection gets complicated, such as the focus on the absurd elements of embodiment or darkly humored abstraction in The Thin Man and Numbers move us. That said, they offer a respite from the intense confessions at the center of this book.
Lucas’ chaotic introspection into love and loss as something more than binary states of being makes Splashed Things a sterling debut collection. Just when you think that sorrow has passed, she pulls out more small snapshots of a life, a lover, with such clarity that you’re overcome with emotion again and again. Using strong central metaphors and a bit of absurd language, Lucas unfolds a tragedy in a way that reminds us we don’t have to concentrate on only what or who was lost; we may also consider how far that impact will go and how grief–like the physics of water–is dispersed and eventually settles.
About the reviewer: A child of the Indiana side of the Ohio River Valley, Blake Chapman is a graduate student at Ball State University studying Creative Writing with a background in journalism and media. He proudly serves as an intern and reader for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and his first official publication can be found in the 2026 issue of The Broken Plate. The rest of his writing is collecting dust on an outdated hard drive or in the cloud, so you’ll have to ask nicely for him to share it.