Ioanna Carlsen Poems

For a moment it flashed
through me, I thought I
remembered being someone before now,
the her who was me
...

You could grow into it,
that sense of living like a dog,
loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin,
able to exist only for the sake of existing.
...

On Reading Cioran

Leaf caught in a branch of ice,
I am unsleeping,
heroic,
neither dead, nor dreaming,
awake.
...

The music comes on with the lights,
the little opera of emptiness begins, the little
dance of no one there —
just the rooms exhibited
...

Back in the time when you breathed
I would say breath to you and you
would answer back,
I would say breathe to you and you would do it:
...