Elisa Carlsen

Elisa Carlsen was born and raised in the high desert of Northern Nevada. A contemplative, her poetry and creative non-fiction has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Trumpeter, Sierra Nevada Review, Argentum, Marrow, Carte Blanche, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere, Elisa is the author of Cormorant (Unsolicited Press 2023) and Beulahland (2028). She is an award-winning poet whose work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry film, The Basin, was selected for the 2025 Nature & Culture International Poetry Film Festival in Denmark. Elisa has paid good money to have her writing rejected by a former Yogurtoligist turned Poetry Editor, among countless others. Tired of the standard author bios and submission experience, Elisa created Rabbitbrush.org - a literary journal for outsiders. Check it out.

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► Elisa Carlsen's microchap & (selected) poems are available below. Download the PDF by clicking the title.

Origami Microchap with Selected Poems

Elephantine

Click title to download microchap

Cover image from sculpture

made by poet

emigrants traveling through Nevada
in the 1840s, reported seeing Elephants
on the bone white alkali flat…Elephants
when they were dying of thirst
in the perilous dust

IV.

just a muddy river in the desert
where elephants used to be
and somewhere down the line
two people fighting about
how much they loved each other.

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Poets