the air burning, acrid billows from backyard pits
the Buffalo River green with fertilizer, ammonia blooms
freon blooms, the sweetgum & apple trees rusting from their petioles
E. coli, measles, stone mounds, crumbling bridges, lost causes
iodine hue of the horizon dappled by chicken houses
deer polyped with tuberculosis, boars crenelated with salt
gas leaking into the karst, the tangled lesions of bone
blistering upon the landscape, red berries
of Nandina domestica, heavenly bamboo, cyaniding the birds from the inside
cedar waxwings, eastern bluebirds, northern mockingbirds, the state bird
the body drained of blood, toxic rain filling in the eyes, the loam
pus in the rice, sputum in the cotton, the moon, the liver shriveling
the streetlights bleaching the stars out out of hope
the field brimming with Arcadia’s premier celebrity resident
C.S. Carrier’s books include After Dayton and Mantle. His poem, “The Natural State,” won the third annual Omnidawn Broadside Contest in 2018. Other poems have appeared in Four Way Review, Quarterly West, and Whale Road Review. He has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He lives in Indianapolis, IN.