The Ofi Press Magazine

By Kim Göransson, Sweden/ USA (Published in Issue 13)

Gothenburg blue

 Gothenburg at night and the morning after.

Its cranes and harbor-gray outlines.

I don’t mean to forget.

I have not forgotten yet. Poseidon,

almost human in bronze,

fists clutching. Why do we make our Gods

pose so? And I miss sometimes

the bleeding hearts walking up and down

Avenyn in mini-skirts in the summer.

Your animated fountains.

But you took your backpack

full of water bottles, up on Ramberget,

slipped quietly into your noose.

Not so quietly, not really.

Gothenburg blue but never red,

why such weeping at such a distance?

I have your timetables memorized,

your numbers filed away.

Call me, you said, promise you will

call me and I promised

and I called and you said:

“I don’t remember you. Who are you?”

I’m places and names and streets and colors

and soft voices and loud voices

and longing with guilt and pleasure and falling.

I’m cinema at Järntorget and union politics,

the adult shops and the cultural exchange.

I’m Café Centro. I'm Hängmattan, 2002.

I’m falafels at Bellevue. I’m the fucking

museum of natural history.

Gothenburg blue but never red, orange, screaming

at night comparing notes clutching my fists

and you saying: why do you pose so? Why

do you lean so? It’s not natural,

it makes you look impotent.

Look, write what you know.

Look, write what you don’t know.

Look, just what feels right when it feels right.

Follow your intuition.

Follow your prescription.

Tonight when everything feels out of sorts,

I write what maybe I know and something

about Gothenburg, or maybe that

I know nothing and that that’s all right somehow,

because memory is a funny thing but

I also thought, you know, that at some point

I would return to all the places I’ve been

to erase them to maybe see you there

because you were the last face I saw

and faces are important.

Eyes are important,

the things you forget first

maybe because they’re important

and all that remains are the ruins of what once was,

street names and text books and memories

that become stories I want to catch

before they fall and lose their scents,

their something inner something

soul laughter terrible the stuff

of moments as they happen and I know

it’s futile and I know the colors fade,

that while you sleep the cranes in the distance

change their positions and that tears dry

into the shirt sleeves

and the love music stops and you have to keep dancing

and without guidance and in the dark

and that even together you are alone

and alone is sometimes a temple and sometimes

a fucking abyss.

So Gothenburg I suppose I’m through, through, through

and I just wanted to say that I called again

and your answer machine picked up and well

I’m sorry.

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