Sarah Green’s book, Earth Science, was a runaway poetry hit when Amy’s press 421 Atlanta put it out in 2016—and it has some beautiful reviews on Goodreads to show for it. I like the one that starts “So. Many. Tears.” But that reviewer was biased, so I also like the one that goes, “Gorgeous, delicate heft.”
It’s really nice, ten years later, to get to bring back a book that was so exquisitely done in the first place. Below are a couple sample poems. Find the whole collection here. And Sarah will be reading at Snowfort on December 6, 2026, with Matthew Klane. More info on that here.
Actually No One Was Tap Dancing
Actually no one was sweating
in some third story with waxed floors.
Actually no scratchy record was playing
Tchaikovsky to ungrateful schoolgirls
stretching their arabesques higher
higher, striving for the smooth line
from ponytail to pointed toe. Actually
no ten-year-old, tan, fresh out of
gymnastics camp, was congratulated
on her summer-flat belly in a room
teary with mirrors. If it sounded like
clumsy metal on wood, the out-of-steps
cuff of shiny patent leather, stopping
and starting again, it wasn’t. As a matter
of fact, it was a teenage boy running
a stick along a black railing. Flap-shuffle,
shuffle, ball-change. Slight frown. Fierce as
his thoughts, the real live sun, setting.
Blue Hour
It’s all—yesterday—it’s sweet behind me
like a low branching sun you’d turn your head for,
like a red-haired woman, like somebody’s onegood song.
I could do worse, humming.
I’m telling you, all the shades—my father’s glass
of wine, my brother’s Red Sox hat, my mother’s
shirt, that glow of white—they worked their way
into a new kind of color. We tucked our hair behind
our ears. We drank our ice. We were gorgeous
in the eyes of our soup spoons.
