Colleen S. Harris

Sonnet for the Fall of an Empire

Here in the land of bread, milk and honey
we wag our wine and vinegar tongues
while everything gleams like looted copper,
and landmines nap between slick rows of corn.

Hungry children traipse over our corpses
singing only the most beautiful hymns,
the gardens grief-tilled with bones of young men
sprouting black blossoms to the bugle’s moans.

The sun, too lazy to finish her arc,
stumbles over jagged mountain crowns
tossing shadows into the wise mens’ beards
as they stumble drunk toward Bethlehem.

We kneel to worship the pale-shadowed moon
until ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

 

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Colleen S. Harris is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose books of poetry include God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; re-released by Doubleback Books, 2019), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), and she co-edited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free Verse, Appalachian Heritage, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others.