A Front Porch in Pikeville

by Colleen S. Harris (April 2025)

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A Front Porch in Pikeville, Circa 1998
for Jason
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I stepped out onto a porch with a snoring hound
and a wide swing the breadth of my need.
The rickety perch held firm while his mother
–
warmed her hands on her coffee cup, predicted
who might attend the local apple festival in an accent
my New York ears would take six more months
–
to translate well, and my Long Island mouth
would adopt in small measure over three
more years. That dancing cadence, matching
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callouses on our hands, the dog asleep beneath
the slats, encouraged me to trust my weight
to the swing, to trust this modest house—
–
six hundred and ninety-three miles from
my house, two hundred and four miles from
my dorm where my mother thought I was
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studying for a microeconomics midterm—
would hold me. I dangled above the dog and lost
myself in her Appalachian song, in the saffron
–
and crimson waves of those Kentucky hills, gentler
than the roiling Atlantic that battered me through
my uncertain youth. I basked in the arm-drape
–
of the first boy who taught me I could feel safe in
someone else’s hands, that I could be delivered like
an unbroken promise after a baptism of Goldschlager
–
and apple pie shine into my roommate’s resigned
hands, to wake fully clothed with my first tattoo, shoes
still on, to fourteen missed calls from my mother.
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Tell the Bees
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In Europe, they would tell the bees
about important happenings: new baby,
lost seanmháthair, how the eldest
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daughter was finally wed and well
on her way to motherhood. Without
news, the bees might stop making
–
honey, might leave, might die. I gaze
out at the lawn, left long for the little
pollinators, and worry. Should I tell
–
them you are not coming back?
That your books and polo shirts
Escaped the closets, and my books
–
are expanding to fill empty space,
like lungs filling with the first breath
of April air after too long inside?
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Would they like to know the hound
that haunted the rusted water-spout
where they congregate at noon
–
has died? If bees have time to listen,
I may hover over the milkweed,
whisper to them so they can go back
–
to the hive and dance to pass on
gossip, to waggle, shake, and tremble
to my small tragedies and triumphs.
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Table of Contents

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 2025), Babylon Songs (First Bite Press, forthcoming 2026), 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).

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