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What’s Torn
Jennifer Campbell

-after Dorianne Laux

The irascible muscle
across the belly, seared
by surgical release of a child.

Pages of a journal,
secret alphabet of longing,
lying in shredded death
beside tax documents.

The hem of a doll’s dress,
marked with a five cent sticker
at a garage sale.

Magazine covers ticked
by nervous hands in waiting rooms.
Divots of grass yanked
by imperfect strokes.

Career-ending injuries.
Communities curled into cul de sacs.
Families rent by border wars.

Flags frayed and no longer
flapping, folded in respectful piles.
Concert tees worn again and again,
each time a form of transport

to live wires torn from speakers,
storms yanking electrical lines
out of the sky to spark

and snap, bringing memories
to their showstopping close.

—
Jennifer Campbell is an English professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has two full-length poetry collections, Supposed to Love and Driving Straight Through, and her chapbook of reconstituted fairy tales was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2021. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in The Healing Muse, San Pedro River Review, Heirlock, and Paterson Review.

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Banker to Borrower by Joseph Hutchison
Thank You Day by Patricia Smith Ranzoni

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