Lauren K Carlson

How to Be a Better Listener

Night’s pitch
thrown through
the eardrum, blue
but deeper than
blue. Dark like dark
waters when calm
are flat or glass
seen into and through,
surface and depth.
The ancients perceived
two dreams: the waters above
and the waters below,
which reality parses.
The body real
as a knife
through fruit.

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Lauren K Carlson is recent graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her poems can be found in such publications as Waxwing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Salamander and others. Her chapbook, Animals I Have Killed, was published in 2018 as the winner of Comstock Review's chapbook prize. She is also a reader for Palette Poetry.