Shelly Jones
Traces
He climbs over piles of books,
dog-eared and underlined
with tufts of post-it notes billowing
out from them like hair electrified.
He sets his coffee down on the stacks,
precariously balanced, but there is
no more table space.
He finds words clutched in my hand
as I sleep, more words resting
in the cavity of my breasts,
inching toward my lips, tired inspiration.
I find equations nested in napkins,
scrawled on scrolls of grocery store receipts.
We take a hike and he is silent,
his brain humming in the autumnal air.
I clomp behind him, snatchets of stories sticking
to my clothes like burdox, and I wonder if
he is calculating the geometry of the woods,
or the calculus of the pileated woodpecker
as she dips and dives through the canopy
to escape our stomping thoughts,
so she may eat her larvae in peace.
“Traces” was previously published in 3rd Wednesday magazine in January 2021
Self-Portrait as Our Favorite Streaming Service Buffering
We go around in circles,
multitasking, attempting
too much before realizing
we haven’t listened,
haven’t heard the crucial
dialog of the mystery
unraveling, of our lives
unspooling. We pause,
attempt to rewind,
only to snarl the stream
into a storm of confusion,
unable to find itself,
unable to move on.
Shelly Jones is a professor at a small college in upstate New York, where they teach classes in mythology, literature, and writing. Their speculative work has been published in F&SF, Podcastle, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. Find them on Twitter @shellyjansen or https://shellyjonesphd.wordpress.com/.
