serenading charles nelson reilly

Here are two prose poems by Danish poet Carsten Rene Nielsen from The World Cut Out With Crooked Scissors. read them


Elephant
The elephant on the mural in the Church of Birkerod is highly unusual. It has no trunk, but rather a snout in the shape of a horn on an old gramophone. It's slender as a racehorse; its thick tail splits into three. Instead of hoove-like nails, it has on its feet four elaborately curving claws of ivory. In contrast, it has no tusks, and its neck is equipped with large, serrated scales like a crocodile's. Most of all I love its round white eyes, each with a great black pupil, lending it a sad and at the same time utterly baffled expression. Like it knows that it's been painted all wrong.

Winter
We are naming the birds, and to what use: under the ice of the inlet a skeleton swims with eyes wide-open; at the cemetery the much-too-soon dead lie eating themselves. It is winter, and a bare tree scrapes with its branches on the fire door of the gray sky.


have a nice day