Crow City
I think you could be a whole lot better at self-critique
I say to myself at night. Outside, at least fifty crows
have descended upon the parking lot. Picking at trash,
cawing until the scratch of their calls weaves one long, rough fabric.
One more thing I want to say about the crows: their many bodies
in one field is like television static, or a city mid-rainfall.
The problem is these days there are too many things
to focus on. When the birds are flying knives, raw and marble-fleshed.
How can I feel like celebrating when someone says just one
kind thing? I feel the need to time-stamp every touch
before erasure opens its mouth. I’m growing a garden slowly
where no one can see. There, my Icelandic poppies are thriving
their seeds unplucked by hungry crows or covered by shit
or thorny, damp leaves. There was a time when I thought
taking only good things into my body was growth,
would make me good and growing too.
Photo by Spencer Pond
Carolyn Supinka is a writer and visual artist originally from Indiana, Pennsylvania, currently living in Portland, Oregon. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University, where she received a Provost’s Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. She is the author of inside voice, a micro chapbook of poems and collages forthcoming from Ghost City Press in 2021. Her work has recently been published or is forthcoming in Hobart, DIAGRAM, Bear Review, and Radar Poetry. Find her at https://cargocollective.com/carolynsupinka and @carolynsupinka