Quake

As expected, I felt it first in the backs of my heels

A close and tight vibration

Running up my thighs

and although the concept is hardly new

it still shook me when the linoleum floor in perfect squares

and the cute and measured glass doors held by

steal frames

shifted

beneath and around me

in deliberate, repeating shimmies

 

how strange

to see things loosing form

to see the awful spaces between our daily concretes

like grout beneath the tile

or those third-world creases of the body

that never see the sun

 

I planted myself firm and looked

Far off to keep my ground

But then I heard the voices

Giggling about me by the lockers

Outside my window in the sun

And everything went still

I lost my space

And fell

© Jennifer Chaussee

 

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Reviews

[J Todd Underhill]

Wonderfully done, I personally have lived through a 6.2 Quake, and you captured it well, its an odd thing when something as solid as the ground is turned loose by a quake rendering you unable to make sense of anything!