Siân Killingsworth | If This Isn’t a Pandora’s Box | Poets Resist

Siân Killingsworth’s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Columbia Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, Ekphrastic Review, Oakland Review and Mudfish. She has an MFA in poetry from the New School, where she served on the staff of Lit. Siân is a copywriter by day and webmaster for the Marin Poetry Center the rest of the time.

Siân Killingsworth’s Website.

Also by Siân Killingsworth: Inanna Speaks A Woman Walks Into a Bar Three Micropoems

Poets Resist
Edited by Jemshed Khan
May 9, 2019

Siân Killingsworth

If This Isn’t a Pandora’s Box

First, no water. Then floods and storms. Now no break from fire. Guns, guns, guns. Fear and pain hurled out of a box as fast as possible. A different death, another loss: the 24-hour news cycle doesn’t have time enough to document it all. All we can do is run if we can. What’s chasing us may catch up. What we see: Facebook. Instagram. CNN. A continuum. His back to us, a man runs into the smoke. Protected by a reflective wrap, he pushes over a wall, hairline first. He will be the only one to live. A rebel. It was tough in the beginning. It still is. This graffitied, crumbling wall of disaster curves over the horizon into tomorrow. The jackal of chaos presides, his vicious kin at his feet. It’s more sinister because it’s carefully thought out by suited men shouting about poll returns and profit. How many eyeballs can we get? How many dollars? We have to keep that box cracked. The funnel’s mouth sucks us all in. The rebel struggles to jump up behind the jackal: his leaping silhouette shimmies near black wings, hurtling toward heaven. Or to attack. It’s hard to tell. Nearby, another livestreams it on his cellphone.