Carolyn Supinka

In Her Hoot

On your birthday we stood in the desert. A horned owl swooped overhead because she was trained to swoop. I wore a big hat because my skin burns easily. We silenced our phones because a sudden ringtone would disturb the bird, send her wheeling away from the observation field into the shimmering desert. The edges of the world curled with heat, and because I wanted you to see how happy I was, I looked at you each time the owl looked at me. Because you asked to see the owl food, we got to see the guts. The owl trainer held out the little white yogurt cup, and the tips of her bare fingers stained and streaked with pink and a purple that felt interior. Because I learned that bald eagles were no longer endangered but gray wolves were nearly extinct, I wanted to see the one pacing the same path in her enclosure again and again. Because I wanted to create an enclosure around this memory of you in the sun, looking at rat guts on the first day of a new decade. Because the owl trainer told us you could learn about an owl from her hoot, who she is, who she’s searching for. Because I was afraid to picture love as a single note shivering across the desert in the night. Because I want to know what you can learn from the sounds I can’t help but make.

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Carolyn Supinka is the author of the chapbook Stray Gods (2016, Finishing Line Press) and is a writer and visual artist living in Portland, Oregon. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Pondicherry, India from 2013-2014. Her work was most recently published in The Sonora Review, Arcturus and The Recluse and is forthcoming in DIAGRAM.