Interlitq publishes its poem in English for 19.03.12, “Imagining Sweden” by Florida poet Jesse Millner, a contributor to Issue 13 of Interlitq
Imagining Sweden
When I was ten-years-old, my mom
bought a cheap painting at K-Mart that
showed a lake surrounded by snow-
capped mountains. I imagined it was
Sweden and quite often in my childhood
I wanted to crawl over the couch and launch
myself into that alpine landscape, leaving
my loneliness behind and starting a new
life in a world filled with blonde, large-breasted
Nordic women. I knew they would love me,
pimples and all. I knew they would accept
all my sorrow and translate it into long
afternoons where one of the girls would
hold my hand as we stared into the lake,
until I’d forget I was merely a boy
who’d crawled into a picture–and everything
would become real: the soft hand of the girl,
the lake sparkling in all that afternoon light,
the wind a little too warm for the altitude,
but, hey, I’d never complain
as the sweet night darkened the water
and the stars scrawled their wistful calligraphy
in syllables of silver and white.
About Jesse Millner:
Jesse Millner’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Slant, Cider Press Review and numerous other literary magazines. He has published six poetry chapbooks and one full-length collection, The Neighborhoods of My Past Sorrow (Kitsune Books, 2009). His next book, Dispatches from the Department of Supernatural Explanation, will be released in April of 2012. Jesse Millner teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida.
