by Carolyn Supinka

Because it has unspooled. Yesterday I gathered my wool. I looped soft orbits around my forearms as I discovered length after length. It lay limp on the sidewalk like a dead snake. Dingy with rainwater in the city, by the time I wandered to the research pastures it had tangled in the black thickets and beetles clicked thick in the fibers. Further down the road, I saw a hawk perched next to a patch looped around a fencepost, combing through the strands slowly, like my mother used to comb the tangles from my hair, with a stiff fist of talons. My mother is standing in a puddle of my wool, disappointed. “How long is this going to take?” It’s a daily effort. Keeping track of my wool, putting myself in order. The constant threat of being shorn.

Carolyn Supinka is a visual artist and writer based Oregon where she is an MFA candidate at Oregon State University. She is a co-editor of VIATOR, a literary journal, and the author of the chapbook Stray Gods. Her work can be found most recently in The Coachella Review, Wicked Alice, and Poet Lore. You can follow her at @carolynsupinka and http://cargocollective.com/carolynsupinka