The Spit Scene

We still can’t figure out what to do with the body.

My wife wants to bring the plague inside the auditorium.

Sara wants to remake Francesca Woodman with cocaine.

I will photograph both of them with my shitty

phone-camera. I know what you are thinking,

you are thinking: What will you do with the camera that hasn’t already been done with a fist,

Crime Flower? I know you think it’s no longer feasible to make corpses in the street, but I have

no other choice. They are posing for me. Don’t tell it’s pornography or tell me it’s

pornography, everything is porn if you look hard enough. Every corpse in the street is an image

of itself.

I’m shooting every one of them with my rifle.

And the riot isn’t even over!

 

—Johannes Göransson (St. Joseph County)

This poem will appear in the author’s The Sugar Book (forthcoming).

 

Johannes Göransson lives in South Bend, Indiana, and teaches at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of six books—including The Sugar Book, from which this poem is taken—and the translator of several books from Swedish, including a book by Aase Berg and Johan Jönson.

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem from an Indiana poet every day in April (hand-selected by Indiana Poet Laureate George Kalamaras). Check in daily to see who is featured next!