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When I hear you smile, I apologize for everything. The rain, my dollar store umbrella, the eight hours of airport salads and your dead phone battery, whatever high pressure system pushed this all your way the first weekend you’re back in town. You didn’t come all the way out to the west coast, the first …

In Vancouver I ran on icyroads each morning, then stood in the shower, scalding, thoughtof slipping. I watched the kettle til my eyes teared up,the light blurring, I made instant coffee, drove south through the redwoods, embarrassed by words, their poverty: rocks in the water like petrified whales; Joni Mitchell; sweet grapes on the passenger …

bold in bright green with yellow accents, industrial orange. To afford it, you mortgage your land, yourself. It rolls over your rich grasslands, harrowing your fields. The wild of you, marsh bunnies, garter snakes, try to skitter away, end up bloody and macerated, mowed. Mulch, microbes, the dirt of you tossed, turned to be replanted. …

I met Stan on his hands and knees, croaking to a Sonoran Desert toad that had escaped its enclosure. SDT-4, a wily and tenacious explorer according to Stan’s notes, was wedged in the space between the lab oven and the wall. Later, when I dried out SDT-4’s skin in the same oven, I concluded that …

Tonight, rain drapesthe blue acacia & the streetlights shimmer, shroudthe cars in shadows. My sick, who calls herself daughter, points at how the blossoms curl to cocoonsthen commit themselves to air. She wantsto know wherethe scavengers take them,& why at nightwhen her name emerges, they come so closeshe could reach a hand, stroke their knotted …

I mean, let’s face it: I am not the easiest person to love. When I was a child I crashed my father’s radio after my foot got tangled with the cable having jumped over it like the cow did with the moon. Hey diddle diddle, come here you little shit, and soon my legs were …

You’re still barefoot in the creek as crawdads scuttle under rocks.You’re in the kitchen too, dogunderfoot as oil swirls in a pan. You’re in the treehouse cradling a library book, peeling a sunburn.You prune the lupine, deadhead sage, pull weeds up by the roots. You float the swimming hole, too scared of leeches to put …

Title: Enuf Tears to Outweigh the Ocean 11×17, 2020; Medium: Digital Title: The Beginnin’ 11×17, 2020; Medium: Digital Artist Statement:These pieces are two of four digitals works in the series: “MASK OFF: an understanding of slavery thru blk fem bodies.”These pieces are inspired by Christy Clark-Punjara, my professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in her …

Elizabeth is my father’s mother’s daughter and was my best friend growing up. Born two weeks apart, we were raised as sisters, though she was technically my aunt. We grew up knowing she held this ranking. She sometimes used it to get what she wanted. I’m your aunt, she’d say, so you have to share …

Note: These poems are erasures of The New Etiquette: The Modern Code of Social Behavior by Margery Wilson (1937) Carrie Green is the author of Studies of Familiar Birds: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2020). She earned her MFA at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for …