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by Jan Harris
Jan Elaine Harris is an Associate Professor of English and Writing at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Halcyone, The Portland Review, Camas, The Rumpus, The Exposition Journal, Waxing and Waning, and Event. She lives in Nashville with her spouse and her two perfect GSPs, Malloy and Astrid-June.
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Exclusion Zone
in these latter days we have embraced an enigmatic
vocation we stand in abandoned cul de sacs and
radiate love we are glad of gainful employment
all the infrastructure we had known collapsed
we had to abandon the luxury of occupations
they are no longer available to us we miss them
now we can only radiate love and it is hard labor
we stand in cul de sacs point our chests towards
discarded mc-mansions and their derelict hedges we
begin to oscillate with the intractable surge that vibrates
between our ribs love pulsates with a ferocious
diffraction like the nuclear fallout that is still releasing
in the forests we cannot know if our work changes
anything in hopeful times pop songs told us love
could move mountains that no mountain could stop love
but we admit there is no empirical evidence to support
that this was ever true yet rumors persist that deer and
foxes have returned to Chernobyl’s exclusion zone that
wildflowers crowd its meadows and in its shadows green
things begin to grow
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