ISSUE 7

Holaday Mason​

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Extinction: The Woman in the Box

1.

The woman in the box is speaking.
I am the woman in the box.
I hear a staircase to an old season.

The archives are a red neon door
left in blankets of dreamy ficus tangles.
I am the woman with the claws.

My belly is made of ten folded
stories too big to fit in the box.
Even truths can be frozen by narrow

judgments. Wednesday, leaf
hornets crack the glass,
fascinated by their own mirages.

I am the woman who does not want
to plod up to see the dead oaks,
their trunks collapsing after

the fires, or watch the canyons
erode while coyotes run
the middle line of sunset,

bristling with irate thirst.
I am the woman who is not hidden
anymore in a tent that doesn’t

fully protect from stinging ants.
In a recording, a modern Buddha
says, all life is shiny, a little plastic

toy you better not step on.
In the dark I speak out loud, ask
how long my heart intends to beat,

ask what did we do, what do we do?

2.

Ten folded

stories

 

 

crack the glass,

fascinated by their own mirages.

 

 

In a recording

I speak out loud,

 

 

irate & not hidden

anymore.

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