Barbara Harris Leonhard

A golden shovel sonnet after “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

The suffering of people de-fame-d
and cast from this land
based on their skin color, not where they stand.
The would-be king, who speaks with flame-s
and double-checks his list of name-s,
refuses refugees a hand.
Instead, he issues heartless command-s.
Without the the facts, DHS frame-s
Poet Renee Nicole Good, shot by ICE when she
drops off her school-age child. Now a poor
child without his mother! — Are foreigners no longer free
to safely seek refuge on our shore?
As for me—
Will I, too, be shown the door?

Barbara Harris Leonhard is the author of Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir (2022) and The Lost Book of Zeroth (2025). She is co-author of Too Much Fun to Be Legal (2024) and Broken Rengay: Unruly Poetry (2025). She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Trending Poets recently named her Poet of the Year. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Albanian, and Chinese. She is the editor for Masticadores USA, FEED THE HOLY, and Latinos USA.

This poem appears in Uprooted: Poems of Resistance, Witness, and Survival (The Chaos Section Poetry Project, Fall 2026). We’re sharing each poem from the collection individually over the coming weeks. You can read the full book or download the free PDF here.