kelly houle
Supernova
The unexpected death
of a starlet
in a nearby
neighborhood
made waves.
The catastrophe,
flagged with yellow tape
sent the astronomers
to their mid-century desks
like sleuths
in a dime store
crime novel.
We all knew
of her, they said,
admired her always
from afar. She was
so beautiful, they went on,
flipping through the photos
before sliding them
with care into
the manilla envelope.
Back then, of course,
and somehow
seeing her this way,
even now.
kelly houle
Kelly Houle is a writer and artist whose poetry has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Radar Poetry, Red Rock Review, Sequestrum, The Round, and Written Here and There: Community of Writers Poetry Review 2020 Anthology. She was a semifinalist for the Emily Dickinson Award (2003) as well as the Red Rock Poetry Award (2004). She has an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University, where she also received a Virginia G. Piper Summer Creative Writing Fellowship. Kelly has been an academic tutor for the past twenty years and has worked at the National Weather Service in Phoenix and Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. She enjoys watching the sky.