406 C.E.

In falling Rome,

everything is memory (of greatness)

and fear (of what’s to come).

Across the Rhine,

Vandal hordes lie watching,

waiting for one hard freeze

to make a bridge out of our moat.

We know this will happen.

The fall has started and

Gravity only runs in one direction.

We call it “down.”

Down the drain.

Dizzy from this endless circling,

we almost long to take the plunge,

just to make it stop.

“Make Us Great Again,” we shout,

while secretly we yearn to drop

into the open maw of history

and go into the dark.

About the author

Donna Glee Williams is a poet, editor, scholar, and writer of literary fantasy and historical fiction. Her poetry has appeared in a wide range of publications, from literary magazines like The Main Street Rag, Inch, The Bellingham Review, and The New Delta Review, to venues where poetry is welcomed less often: The New Orleans Times Picayune, Psychological Perspectives, The Great Toxics March from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and the stage of the Diana Wortham Theater in Asheville. She makes her home in the mountains of western North Carolina, but the craft societies in her novels The Braided Path and Dreamers owe a lot to the time she's spent in Mexico, Spain, Italy, Israel, Turkey, India, Wales, Ireland, and Pakistan. Her forthcoming novel The Night Field is based on the work she did in India on a Fulbright Senior Environmental Leadership Fellowship in 2008. As a finalist in the 2015 Roswell Awards for Short Science Fiction, her short story "Saving Seeds" was performed in Hollywood by Jasika Nicole. Her graceful speculative fiction has been recognized by Honorable Mentions from both the Writers of the Future competition and Gardner Dozois's Best of the Year collection. These days, she earns her daily bread by writing and helping other writers as an editor, but in the past she's done the dance as turnabout crew (aka, “maid”) on a schooner, as a librarian, as an environmental activist, as a registered nurse, as a teacher and seminar leader, and for an embarrassingly long stint as a professional student.