by Carolyn Supinka
I feel his body just one eagle body’s distance
from mine. The glass between us is warm from the sun
and thick as my forearm.
I’ve read that a swan can break a human thigh bone
with its wing, if angered,
and a hummingbird only takes so much sweetness
because it only needs so much sweetness
to live. I don’t envy that knowing the extent of the body
and the extent of what it needs.
The eagle stands there at my eye level on its plastic perch,
and looks directly at me
with a gaze coin crisp, amber chip slice of sap
hardened stone. The eagle looks at us without seeming to care
about us. The eagle is one eagle body distance from me
and one eagle body tall, wings dark and glossy as a nut.
The eagle is known to perform a cartwheel maneuver
with other eagles. This is also called a death spiral.
The eagle hooks the talons of the other eagle
and together they spin as they fall, propelled in circles
toward the earth, sling slung by the momentum
of the other’s weight. They are supposed to let go
just before their spinning eagle bodies hit the ground
but sometimes they forget, or stop caring.
This can be a courtship ritual or territorial dispute.
It’s either a vertical ferocious handholding
or a free falling armwrestle, and either way,
this sounds like a lovegrip I do envy.
Giving yourself over to gravity and another body,
always in the middle of the moment of impact or detach, groundbound
and braindead in a field, or meters apart,
alive and with bird chests full of breath
gasped from deathmouth. Once, I heard
that one eagle died and one was found
still breathing, dazed eagle body found many eagle bodies
away from the other eagle body,
and I wondered whether it was lucky, or let go.
Carolyn Supinka is the author of the chapbook Stray Gods (2016, Finishing Line Press) and is a writer and visual artist who currently lives in 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 Poet Lore.