Names that End in Y  

I don’t care about the world,  

I only care about the people I know.  

Last week, I got a current client confused with another client who  

wandered into the street at 2 AM and was run over by a passing vehicle.  

The driver kept going.  

The clients both have names  

that end in “Y.” They’re both beautiful to the point of being unreal,  

dead or dying.  

I know beauty everywhere.  

I say to whoever will listen:  

I know it but I can’t see it.  

This startling vista, this face,  

this dead wing. Not really.  

The delicate coloring  

of every damned thing.  

Amethyst banana leaves  

flipped over in a gust of wind  

and blue ink elephant ears  

rooted in a pocket stain.  

The feeling of ghosts  

blocking the road  

on the island  

we’ve been on   

this whole time.  

Morning Shifts at the Group Home  

after Mary Szybist  

The job was easy: I unlocked  

the door and found the one  

who’d been out all night  

sometimes he was bleeding  

and sometimes he was fine  

sometimes he cried in my arms  

together we came inside  

and washed his hands and face  

and hands again with mine on top  

together we washed his clothes  

and found his medicine, tending  

to a cut or a bruise, taking stock  

of phone and wallet and shoes  

we would find the recycled flip flops  

and put the first pot of coffee on  

he’d open the blinds while I checked  

the dishwasher from the night before  

fourteen minutes to boil eggs for the whole  

house, three dozen eggs bobbing there  

while the man talked or looked out  

the window at the garden, eyes  

wet from lack of sleep or beers or longing the man would tap his fingers on the kitchen table  

the man would put on some music and dance  

the man would watch the news without speaking the man would stand close and watch the eggs as the rest of the home woke up cracking  

no one liked the grits, the bacon made by a white lady I already told them I was no cook but for the man they  took it slow, careful not to press on his wounds the blood and flip flops a horn bellowing under the table. 

Jessica Kinnison’s work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Phoebe, Entropy, Juked, 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 among eight New Orleans poets to watch in POETS & WRITERS. She holds an MFA in fiction and pedagogy from Chatham University in Pittsburgh where she taught at the Allegheny County Jail. A Mississippi native, she is co-founder of the New Orleans Writers Workshop. She is currently at work on a full-length poetry manuscript entitled “Ways to Die in  Mississippi” and a novel called “Jubilee.” She lives in New Orleans.