Lucy Dougan’s “Leonie” speaks to the strange charisma that inanimate objects can assume over time when they share our space with us. A sculpture of an anonymous artist’s model, after living with the family for decades, suffering “endless room changes, / the tectonic jolts of whole-house moves”, becomes almost sacred to the speaker. Having borne witness to so much of the family’s life, the “many rows and unkind words” and “also good times, rafts of regrettable TV”, the speaker develops an intimacy with the figure that is itself familial, bordering on the erotic: “If I were rendered blind I would know / your lightly pitted cheekbones, / your brow line, your rough underside”.
The sculpture is, of course, brought to life not by any innate animation it possesses, but by the memories the speaker and her family have imbued it with, and this artificial nature offers it a lifespan that is greater than their own, meaning that it can be a reservoir for these memories for longer than they themselves can. It is this dual character, at once familiar and extraordinary (the speaker’s intimacy with the statue is interrupted by its headache-inducing epoxy resin), that inject these objects with their eerie presence. The figure, outliving the speaker’s parents, becomes uncannily totemic of them: “Stranger, stay with us, / watch over us, / never leave us.”
“Leonie” is taken from Dougan’s most recent collection of poems, Monster Field (Giramondo, 2022). The title refers to “the mysterious zone surrealist artist Paul Nash’s called ‘Monster Field’: the place glimpsed from a car at speed, which opens up a space between the everyday and the occult as it ‘almost slides past our eyes’.” Monster Field is Dougan’s seventh book of poems. Her third collection, The Guardians (Giramondo, 2015) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, and won the 2016 West Australian Premier’s Poetry Award. Dougan lives in Perth, where she is poetry editor of Westerly Magazine.
Leonie
Paid artists’ model,
your face has lived with the family for decades.
You have suffered endless room changes,
the tectonic jolts of whole-house moves
yet you remain sanguine.
Your hairstyle has weathered the years
and the many rows and unkind words you have presided over,
also good times, rafts of regrettable TV.
If I were rendered blind I would know
your lightly pitted cheekbones,
your brow line, your rough underside and slight headache-inducing
scent of epoxy resin in which a finger could snag a glassy splinter
of what it is you keep inside the void of your cast.
I cannot see you as empty for in your hollow head lives the clamour of us all.
And something else, you still abide with us
even though our mother and father are dead and gone.
Stranger, stay with us,
watch over us,
never leave us.
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Author: Thomas Moody
