Broken Column, by William Harris

la columna rota

cotton restraints
their metal clasps
clinking in
putrid syncopation
to spasms and
gasps of suffering
iron thorns
merciless
and drinking blood
as poets sangria
an ionic column
crumbling
to dust or ash

frida
your dark hair
flowed naked
in the wind
you could never
paint

***

William Harris‘s poetry has in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Ascent Aspirations, and Write On!!! A graduate from the University of Tennessee- Knoxville, he currently attends graduate school at DePaul University. In his work, he  juxtaposes concrete images with abstract notions, often writes in structures such as non-rhyming couplets and triadic verse, stresses economy, and utilizes such literary conceits as the ecphrastic poem, parallel structure, the epigraph, and the incorporation of mythology.