Barbara Harris Leonhard

(A response in kind to “For the Year of the Insane: A Prayer” by Anne Sexton. I used her first and last lines as mine.)

I.
O Mary, fragile mother,
I hold a silver rosary,
pray, and listen.

Our world has been ill
for more years
than I can count.

Cancers grow in the garden.
Deniers seize dying bees.
Unceasing fires boil clouds,

melting relationships.
Earth’s axis is atilt, like our minds,
conflating reason.

Some can hang on no longer.
The bridge of faith crumbles
in their handholds. Worse yet,

mass shootings. An insurrection.
Political corruption. Treason. Wars.
The United States’ fall from grace.

The vulnerable: immigrants, trans people—
anyone considered easy to bully.
To blame—cast aside as OTHER.

Protestors brutalized or shot dead by ICE
for standing with immigrants. The poet.
The ER nurse. Peace lovers. Gone!

ICE grabs anyone of color to fill quotas.
Even citizens. Even babies from their cribs!
And throws them into ‘concentration camps,’

where they beg for decent food. A bottle.
Medical care. A clean toilet. A bed.
An immigration attorney.
Time itself is moving us
backwards
into a black hole.

II.
O loving mother of mercy,
hear my prayer. I’m a helpless elder.
With scars carved into

my left knee and spine.
For comfort, my pen and prayers.
For safety, pepper spray.

I admit that though I hold this rosary,
I live in fear. Thrown off my axis.
All that I love in my world

is covered in sludge. I have
no strength to shovel myself
out of this hovel.

I am locked
in the wrong house.

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.