Fault Lines

Even way up Northeast
our ground is shaking,
stunning us out of sleep,
sounding invisible sirens within.
We chose a place north of the valley
where the snow would be less likely
to suffocate, the trees less apt
to burn, yet our summer was choked
with smoke and we can’t escape
the underground ruptures,
war below the surface, exposure
too much to recall a time
when the skies weren’t filled
with bombs always somewhere.

Last winter our vents were packed
with angry swirling snow
carving monsters under porch eaves
and stealing our breath
as we dug out. It was hard
not to take it personally.
Today another quake
swallows two thousand people,
the earth deciding how to separate
this moment from the next.

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Jennifer Campbell (she/her/hers) is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has two poetry collections, Supposed to Love and Driving Straight Through, and a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems called What Came First. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, and Paterson Review and is forthcoming in ArLiJo.