Shadow Box

Press me brittle, pained
between panes of glass
weighed with the works

of a man who tried
to arrange all the words
in the world or birds

catalogued by color
when the wrens
and hens are bland

by the hand of a maker
who will not make
women other than forgettable

feather and fur, rib
excuses for winter,
bleak with failed

attempts to flee, migration
for men who mapped
heavy books that hold

glass overhead, trap
the summer in place,
so watch me bleed color

until I am translucent
as a moth fastened in place
with a pin, preserved

like an amber cicada husk
discarded on the sidewalk
with receipts and cigarette ash.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press, 2022), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press, 2018) and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University. You can follow her on Twitter at @SF_Montgomery