poem

by Colleen S. Harris

Lessons From a Baptism

They told me to raise my arms

and sing the lake into a flowing

calligraphy. I cannon-balled instead

and was drowned by the quiet insistence

of water at my pores. They told me

to sink with the weight of my worry

so I could feel how much sorrow

I could hold in this frail vessel

of my body. I floated to the water’s

skin instead, was shocked with hearing

the burn of the sun kissing my body free

of moisture. When I touched the lake’s skirt,

I was drenched as she whispered to me,

and pointed out the spigot rusted

with disuse. When they asked me

what she said, I was too thirsty

to answer that they were a people

who needed to learn how to swim.

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Colleen S. Harris earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, forthcoming), Babylon Songs (First Bite Press, forthcoming), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; Doubleback, 2019), The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), and chapbooks That Reckless Sound and Some Assembly Required (Pork Belly Press, 2014). She goes by 'warmaiden' on Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter.