“Flatlands” by H. Jones

I.
Anxious box
Confining box
Constricting box
Staggeringly tight steel box.

II.
She watched the spider darning
Darning a web in one corner
Busily defying the flood of sterility radiating from the fluorescents
By beating hemolymph around its little body

Building a trap
For all the other crouched creatures
Striving to live on a diet of linoleum and damp
What a heinous creature, she thought
What a turncoat
One traitor is enough for one kitchen

With straw broom, swats the knitter
Catching the edges of his net
Stirring the lines
Frustration bites her fingernails for her
For heights escape her
So seized she hurls her implement high
Tearing loose the offender’s construct thread for thread
And smashing into walls with clangs
She slides to sit down
Spies spider scampering towards the door
She slaps him
Shaking the floor
How she prays
Vibrations could scurry beneath the street
To crack it wide
Exposing the pipes
To hum them to burst
To make it rain in Nevada.

III.
Do not bury me in a box.


H. Jones puts pen to paper in between English studies and rock hunting excursions. She lives in an old factory town with a number of fish.