SEATRAIN TAVERN

by Jessica Kinnison

I crowd-surf in a packed field 
asking every person: Who sings 
this song? Then I sing it.

They all give what I know 
to be the wrong answer. They are making 
a boogaloo out of a ballad. They are calling out 
names. 

Unpronounceable names. Names long forgotten. 
I shake my head all over town. I don’t see 
one bird. I don’t see one alligator. I am frantic
with song.

Snakebit and delirious until my friend turns me on
to the water’s edge. Her flashlight reveals sets of eyes 
all around us. Dozens of pairs of eyes. Alligators 
with their bellies in the mud. 

Suddenly, the owls hurt my ears with their proclamations. 
Too many birds fill my head. Tiny bubbles cover the water.
Green bushes and lice-filled moss become moving train cars full
of knit walls and openings.

Jessica Kinnison's work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Phoebe, and The Southern Humanities Review, among other publications. A 2018 Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellow, her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In April 2020, she was listed as the first of eight New Orleans poets to watch in POETS & WRITERS. A Mississippi native, she is co-founder of the New Orleans Writers Workshop.