Poetry by Jennifer Campbell
These days, you will be the odd one,
everyone else’s focus flickering
to the flow of a billion pixels,
attention ebbing and flowing,
the vastness of that ocean
knocking them off their feet
while your face is a changing map
of parchment, a 90-degree bend
where your nose should be,
eyebrow birds arched above the action,
and should one of them wonder
what lies behind an abstract painting,
Achilles’ empty gold helmet,
or a stark black tree,
it will be impossible to say,
your concentration popped
into the present yet needing time
to pry the words on the page
from the countless incantations
they stir in each reader,
none of which stop you
from knowing where your body is
in this glowing moment
and what they are missing.
Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. Her most recent book, What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021), contains reconstituted fairytale poems. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, ArLiJo, and American Journal of Nursing.
