Nate Jones

Ophelia

In your dress
made of
stones

you look up
and smell
stars

while fish
kiss your
back.

So you
float
and dangle

with bubbles
waiting for the
freeze

waves
curling
in your lungs

melting hours:
this moment,
forever.

---

Slavery (300 Years Deep)

Press re-wind
on my basement
and

there is
blood and
burning

And squeezing
And cramming
And skewers

And knotted rope
And rusty shackles
And horse heads

for dancing
across uneven
concrete floors.

It’s a big room
full of dirt
Or dust

Or ground up
bones

that the ladies
powdered
their faces
with.

---

What It Looks Like

​They were there when we bought the house. A pair of little craters in my bedroom window.

The glass isn’t fully destroyed, no opening to the outside, just two small circles like a madman
mistook the panes and stuck his pushpins in too deep. Or table saw blades frozen in time.

At the center peeps a stream of air. Sometimes still. Sometimes as a blowing wind nipping
uncovered cheeks while ice skating in Chicago. City of business trips. City of lies.

Little spider webs of cracks birth in the center and crawl out to the perimeter of the circles. Both
of them have one or two cracks that slithered too far. They broke the rules. And for that, they
should be hanged.

Imperfections give the window personality, so one day when the bartender calls him a
“lifeless reporter,” he’ll spit out his drink and tell the story of each tattoo.

Two indents in the panes of my window, like someone making it dropped his contact lenses
in before the glass dried. But he was crying. His eyes were spitting them out.

She misses a spot, forgets to wipe it clean. She can never fix him until his time is up. Like
backwards binoculars, or looking through a washing machine.

Just two little spots here when we bought the house from the widow.

My room was his office before he died. Littered with ant hills of paper preparing for his next
report.

Their story of origin is unclear. Like someone shot a bullet at the window. But they are
indented outwards, like he was the one shooting from within.

Trying to get out. And then he did.

--
Nate Jones is a current junior at Princeton Day School and is a long time writer and english-enthusiast. He was recently recognized by the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and he has two plays published by Samuel French. He would like his words to speak for themselves for art is the highest form of expression!