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My Next Life Will Involve Volcanoes
​by Carolyn Supinka


The body clamors like a religion of bells in this season
of waiting in line, scrolling backwards— 

my thumb is sore from searching the past. I said I couldn’t be mean
if I tried, then apologized. We were watching a documentary

about volcanoes, and insights came sudden
as soot, tephra: catchall for everything spat out

still smoking from the other side. I decided my next life
will involve eruption. The sting of mercury. A field

of muted burning. The mountain is never just a mountain,
extinct or asleep. The path is never the same path, from the mouth

to the sea. Melt the words, let them flow white hot, same
as the heat, always, miles beneath our feet. All that separates
​
magma and lava is a threshold. Sometimes, everything I could say
is the smoke, and sometimes it’s the burning.





​NEXT






​


Carolyn Supinka is a writer and visual artist from Western Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in Hobart, Radar Poetry, and Sixth Finch, and is forthcoming in Ecotone and Birdcoat Quarterly. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she creates poems, comics, and prints, and works as an arts administrator and as co-editor of Conjunction, a zine micropress.
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
    • CONTACT
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  • Current Issue
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    • BOOKSTORE
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