Colleen Harris
On the Gift of Language
In the beginning there was a word.
It made the first woman blush.
It stroked a mutt by the fire.
The word warned some mother’s son
away from the lip of the pit.
It called the sun yellow,
and the yellow was true.
The word became a sweet chord
that tasted like apples from Eastern Kentucky,
that sounded like the space between
the flamenco dancer’s shoes and the floor.
It mated with its echo and multiplied.
Colleen S. Harris is 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).