Jessie Knoles

THE NEW ME

day seems stranger still

i want to go to a pumpkin patch

i want to pick the ugliest pumpkin

i want to love and care for it until it oozes on my living room floor

i want to give it a beautiful eulogy and bury it in the compost bin behind my building

i want to buy a new pumpkin to make me feel better and grieve less painfully

day seems stranger still

the air is a love spell

the birds sing praises

i want to feel the sea on my skin

i want to sink deeper

i want to smell my hair after it has been baptized in the sound

a breakfast of kelp and seaweed

wash over me wash over me the pumpkin gets everything

jessie knoles is a midwesterner living in bellingham, washington. her work has been on third point press, the boiler journal, peach magazine, and queen mob's teahouse, among others. she is a poetry editor for hobart pulp.