poem

by Carrie Green

Clew

Pluck it up with an envelope

and thread it through the maze

of boxes packed with books

and silverfish. Trail it behind

as you climb out the window

from which the missing spill.

Unravel it past trumpets

and flying limbs to the library

gilded with whiskey and leather,

where you wrap it about the neck

of a terracotta relic. Lead it

beyond suspicion to the blurred edge

of a secret where you uncover

not the answer, exactly,

but enough proof to know

you will find your way.

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Carrie Green is the author of Studies of Familiar Birds: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2020). “Clew” appears in Millie MacAdoo Takes Note, her forthcoming mystery-in-poems (Able Muse Press, 2026/27). She is the winner of the 2025 Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing. Her poems and visual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, Bellingham Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Carrie hosts the Prompt to Page writing podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.