Four Poems

By - Apr 13, 2019

red days

red letter days make me
think of Charlotte Gainsbourg
in Nymphomaniac
it’s kind of sad when the concept of the sunrise
disappoints her
when it does and that it does
i think it’s terrible
Etel Adnan writes
“drive into the red sun”
that’s not very casual

 

 

4-ever

we were eating different burgers
you were probably talking about how easy
it would have been to kill
some tiny enemy when
you were younger and smoking
on the balcony and about the dream
in which a strange man raped
two small dogs in a house
and one of the dogs was your
mother’s dog and
we’ve landed now and
i’m “toying” with the idea
what happens if only i
remain in the airplane
build something like a failed
nest here for no reason
give up and faint
as an act

 

 

amateur theory 2 (caulbearers)

what if the blind
don’t have better hearing at all
what if a more complex music
doesn’t exist
what if blind people
have been deceiving us the whole time
Björk’s character lied!
we’re lucky that fiction
breathes in a small bubble

 

 

burn

my best friend’s wedding
my second best friend’s wedding
my worst friend’s wedding
my worst friend is my enemy
i hate my enemy
my enemy’s lame wedding
i’m definitely not going to that
but if i do then
i’m not going to have much fun
i’m going to ruin it
break a bottle of wine
or something else
breakable, god
let me think for a minute

 

 

 

_____
Translated from the Swedish by Henry Song. From the poetry collection Red Days (10-tal, 2017). Illustration: Eugene Sundelius von Rosen.