The World-
Africa splitting in two,
Mainline US coasts
and Alaska sinking, too.
Arctic Permafrost melting;
Europe in a heatwave baking.
Everywhere-
People with guns
Spilling the blood and guts
of family, friends, and
Strangers who
Spoke one wrong word
Or no words at all,
Or simply gave a look,
Breaking the shooter's
Sense of self, worth, balance,
Not knowing
or caring
That the World
Never stops moving
and shaking.
In a Universe constantly expanding
Everything breaks
But is recast
and reshaped
Into something new.
All These Things Are Broken by Jackie Oldham |Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
Jackie Oldham, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, is a widely recognized poet and essayist whose work has appeared in print and online for more than five decades, beginning with poems published in the Western High School Baltimore poetry magazine Paradox, for which she also served as Editor-in-Chief during her Senior year (1969-1970).
After earning a BA in English from Goucher College (1974), she worked as a copy editor, team leader, and trainer for Waverly Press, which managed production and printing of major peer-reviewed STEM journals.
Since her retirement in 2013, she resumed writing poetry and essays for her blog, baltimoreblackwoman.com, expanding her focus to narrative poetry and prose about her upbringing and experiences in Baltimore, and political, social, and philosophical issues both personal and universal. She credits her online connections to poetry communities across the country—in particular, her appearances on Quintessential Listening: Poetry with Michael Anthony Ingram—for the broad support she now enjoys. She is a member of the Eastern Shore Writers Association.
Since 2018, her poems have appeared in Oddball Magazine, Rigorous Magazine, Spillwords.com, Silver Birch Press, WOC This Way for Poetry, and Verse-Virtual.
