Johannes Göransson

two poems

from Summer

In my voice the girls are still 
alive in june I woke up to pop music 
that went genom eld fire is how
I’m now making gravity pretty
in porcelain photographs
of a beach hundreds of beaches
which were really one
beach now I'm looking for clues
where I can find that beach
which is where I will end 
the poem the hellish one
I woke up with but I can't find 
the beach I can find dikten 
om utrotning syrenen ska utrotas
jag ska dra ut roten från
mitt hjärta it starts 
in a hospital room sol skiner 
through the window no doctors 
just döden with that animal look 
me with that lilac look
that Hanna look the way I get 
ready for the theft is to dream up 
songs on the radio nobody here 
knows when the off-birds break
I have that oceanic look
that mother is my letter look 
it says I don't belong where 
I belong to june the last june 
e l e v e n a m and I know
what the secret is

When I read a private message 
from my mother 
of pearl to my daughters 
of pearl döttrarna are in the painting 
they invented the nightingales 
I invented döttrarna you didn’t 
invent us you cannot even afford to 
live in your own poem when you 
wake up gravitysick with images
of children by the border 
pöbeln you wake up with a toxic 
virginity yes I wake up with 
treasonous lilacs I want summer 
to go on forever I can’t 
pay for it there are two girls 
in the painting that failed 
to become a masterpiece I don’t 
own it I don’t own a gun 
I don’t even own 
this poem summer does

Johannes Göransson is the author of eight books, including most recently POETRY AGAINST ALL and Transgressive Circulation: Essays on Translation, and the translator of several more, including works by Aase Berg, Eva-Kristina Olsson, Ann Jäderlund and Helena Boberg. He teaches at the University of Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program, and is one of the editors of Action Books.