Mississippi Nocturne

To steal watermelon
you must
be willing
to eat their hearts
and leave the rest.

To steal watermelon
you must
be ready
for scared snakes
in the dark grass.

To steal watermelon
you must
walk with
all that lives
in thickets, brambles, unworn paths.

To steal watermelon
you must
be in cahoots 
with the unknown. 
Have some kind of spirit about you.

To steal watermelon
you must
steer clear of any other vine.
The changes it puts you through.
You got to run, run all the time.

To steal watermelon
you must leave
your shoes off in the mud,
they remain there empty,
looking like you were snatched.

To steal watermelon
you have to dream
of having a taste for something, 
have to test-run sugar water on your tongue.
You have to hope the scarecrow doesn't have a gun.

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Jessica Kinnison's work has appeared in Phoebe, Entropy, Juked, and The Southern Humanities Review, among other publications. A 2018 Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellow, her story "Star Party" placed second in the 2019 Tennessee Williams Festival Short Short Fiction Contest. 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. She serves as Director of Programs at Project Lazarus, a housing facility for people living with HIV/ AIDS. A Mississippi native, she is co-founder of the New Orleans Writers Workshop and host of the Dogfish Reading Series in New Orleans.