Kim Göransson

exile

I dreamed that my special vowels

had been restored. That you woke me up

in the middle of my great monologue

and told me I could live on.

“It's OK, you can live on.”

One by one I hammered the nails.

One by one I hammered into the wall

hoping you would hear me and

change your mind. And wrote to you

in that language that sings

using all the voices I could think of

and you listened and understood

every word as if for the first time.

My exile is nothing special, I said, it's ordinary.

When I say I miss places I really mean I miss you.

You are all the places I will ever miss.

Beneath the eyelids.

One by one we return to the labor room.

One by one forgetting, names, addresses, romances.

There are so many things I don't know about you

and there is never enough time

to get our stories straight.

Learning a new language, you said,

is harder than sleepwalking.

You're in the kitchen frying onions,

crying won't change anything.

Never wake someone who is learning

a new language, you said.

They might get stuck that way.

My great monologue is in me I know it on days

like this when remembering is all, staring

out an empty window.

Barely touching, barely there.

Wear your hair down tonight baby and call it

an experiment in feeling. Frozen

lakes a thousand miles away slowly

thawing become my insides.

You can't say you fully understand a lake

until you've walked over it thinking, I'm walking

over you I'm walking over you until

you reach the other side.

The other side of you is where I will be.

The other side of you is where we will settle down

and start a family.

roadkill II

since we last spoke

the buzzards have been

and gone

and done their thing

the grass grown

thick with it

but still no

sign of

colors changing

in the other room

mother and daughter

sleeping as one

carry away

the afternoon

Kim Göransson was born in Umeå, Sweden, but lives in Virginia, USA. He writes mostly poetry and edits the small e-zine kitchen.