“Safety Items for the Self in Interesting Times” by Jennifer Anne Eagleton

Safety Items for the Self in Interesting Times
by Jennifer Anne Eagleton

I am under. Because I can’t be over.
Over is too high to climb. 
This climb is an inevitable prelude to a fall.
Virtual ankle manacles anchor me to safe ground.

I am whelmed with sound seeking to escape, 
But this sound is considered unsound. 
Condemnation would be a sonic boom.
Muteness is thus desired, virtually induced.

I find virtual containers to put it all in,
Since the new reality abhors a vacuum of the true. 
Locked up tight in these soft boxes of light.
If necessary, a button click to electronic erasure.

_{How to cite: Eagleton, Jennifer Anne. “Long Night’s Journey into Day: A Monologue Play.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 28 Sept. 2020, hkprotesting.com/2023/05/22/safety-items/.}

_{Photograph © Jennifer Anne Eagleton.}

Jennifer Anne Eagleton, a Hong Kong resident since October 1997, is a committee member of the Hong Kong Democratic Foundation and a Civic Party member. She has been a close observer of Hong Kong politics since her arrival in the city. She was an adviser to the University of Hong Kong’s “Designing Democracy Hong Kong” project (2011-2013), and in 2012 completed a PhD on how Hong Kong talks about democracy using metaphor. Jennifer has written a number of language-related articles for Hong Kong Free Press HKFP and is currently compiling a book combining Hong Kong culture, photography, and political metaphor. A previous president of the Hong Kong Women in Publishing Society, Jennifer is also a part-time tutor of stylistics/discourse analysis at OUHK as well as a freelance writer, researcher, and editor on cultural topics. In her spare time she collects Hong Kong political pamphlets and artefacts. [See all entries by Jennifer Anne Eagleton]