You, Abstracted
Juliana Briggs | Poetry, Summer 2026
What is your bandwidth? My radio
wrinkles sound like dirty bedsheets. In dreams,
your face is dirt-speckled and your teeth
gleam, catching moonlight and passing it on
to me. Never did I consider the chickadees
or the Carolina Wren until I was stood
in blue light while the VCR spit out the tape again
and again like a dollar in a hospital
vending machine. Tender is the body
between rain and sleep. You are a rope swing
hung on a tree branch and I am the promise
of movement, the river beneath the dangling
feet of the playful that you hold. Sometimes,
as I sink my teeth into the day’s fruit, memory
cracks the enamel like an unwanted apple
seed and I am all at once sick in the knees. I knead
my spirit, work it between my aging hands
from the time my morning swats dream-dust
off her hips until the blue evening drains
through the kitchen’s screen door
and the crickets’ song shakes all that swollen fruit
loose from its branches.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“Non-uniquely, I'm usually not satisfied with expressing emotions or recounting events outright; I never feel as though I've gotten everything out. This poem is pretty representative of the ways I try to bend language and abstract feeling in a kind of game of sensation association in search of the perfect image or metaphor that'll evoke the sentiment I want it to. I'm always trying to reach into a more instinctual space far above the processed thought or feeling.”
Juliana Briggs is a Pittsburgh-based writer, runner, drummer, and lesbian working in trauma and transfusion medicine research. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Rogue Agent and Superpresent.
You, Abstracted
Juliana Briggs | Poetry, Summer 2026
What is your bandwidth? My radio
wrinkles sound like dirty bedsheets. In dreams,
your face is dirt-speckled and your teeth
gleam, catching moonlight and passing it on
to me. Never did I consider the chickadees
or the Carolina Wren until I was stood
in blue light while the VCR spit out the tape again
and again like a dollar in a hospital
vending machine. Tender is the body
between rain and sleep. You are a rope swing
hung on a tree branch and I am the promise
of movement, the river beneath the dangling
feet of the playful that you hold. Sometimes,
as I sink my teeth into the day’s fruit, memory
cracks the enamel like an unwanted apple
seed and I am all at once sick in the knees. I knead
my spirit, work it between my aging hands
from the time my morning swats dream-dust
off her hips until the blue evening drains
through the kitchen’s screen door
and the crickets’ song shakes all that swollen fruit
loose from its branches.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“Non-uniquely, I'm usually not satisfied with expressing emotions or recounting events outright; I never feel as though I've gotten everything out. This poem is pretty representative of the ways I try to bend language and abstract feeling in a kind of game of sensation association in search of the perfect image or metaphor that'll evoke the sentiment I want it to. I'm always trying to reach into a more instinctual space far above the processed thought or feeling.”
Juliana Briggs is a Pittsburgh-based writer, runner, drummer, and lesbian working in trauma and transfusion medicine research. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Rogue Agent and Superpresent.