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Hatched

Posted on 01.20.21 by Alison Cantrell

Poetry by Elisa Carlsen

some birds, like us
are born featherless
mouths open
hungry for the whole
shameless with a need
that makes it hard to live
and harder still to love
somehow, we survive it
perfect circles
among many squares
alone in a world that fits us
like other people’s clothes
we get along
with cigarettes and long nights
and me
dreaming you
and you
dreaming me
into each other’s background
against the blue-gray curve
of an indelicate world
that deepens
if only
for the seconds
we were in it


Elisa Carlsen grew up on the dirt roads of Humboldt County in the Big Empty. Against all odds, she went to college and landed a fancy job in environmental policy. After living and working in Portland for eleven years, she moved with her partner to an old farmhouse in Astoria. She is working on her first collection of poetry that has more to do about cormorants than she can explain here.

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