Hunter Parsons

SUPERNOVA

The moon tangles the stars in the sky
like the strands of Christmas lights looped
between my fingers. My mother points firm, dry
hands to each broken bulb that droops
like tulips without rain. She means to guide me toward new light
but instead sticks broken glass into my palms. She says it's back:
the coyote that won't stop howling. It keeps her awake at night
and hungry for the moon. I'm hungry too; to join the pack
eschewed from home, under flickering streetlights and into backyards,
feasting on whatever we can find: crab apples, sewer rats, stale 
pizza crusts, broken light bulbs. I want to tell her we are on guard
from those who forget to listen closely at night to our wails.
A collar of lights noosed tight, my beaming flecks
are lassos of constellations around my neck.

Hunter Parsons was born and raised in the Metro Detroit area. She holds a BA in English with a writing emphasis from Kalamazoo College, where she studied under poet Diane Seuss. She has been published in The Cauldron, Kalamazoo College's literary magazine. Currently, she is caught in the shuffle of post-grad life, and can be found eating all of the cheese out of the refrigerator.