In my found poem based on “Lather and Nothing Else“, by Hernando Tellez, the conflict is internal, because the barber has to choose whether or not to kill Captain Torres who is a leader of the enemy. The barber is shaving Torres and knows that it would help people everywhere in the country to murder him, and it would be easy to, as he says in the story “I could cut his neck like this: Jab! Jab! I wouldn’t give him time to protest and since his eyes are closed he wouldn’t see the glint of the blade or the glint in my eyes.” But he knows that in the long run, it won’t be helpful, because then he would be condemned as a murderer and people would still die. He knows exactly how to murder Captain Torres but also knows the consequences and doesn’t know if it is worth it.

I think that my poem portrays this well because, while it isn’t super long, it shows that while Captain Torres is not a good person, he is not the focus of this story. The focus of this story is that the barber should kill him but it is incredibly hard for him to murder someone, because, after all, Torres is still human. We know that it is for the greater good that the barber would kill him, but also that killing is hard and the barber is unable to kill him. The conflict is quite clear in that through the second sentence you can see him fighting internally.

I chose the image of a man holding a shaving blade because the barber was shaving Captain Torres and was planning on using it as a weapon. I made sure it had a dark backdrop because of the fact that this story is very dark and to make sure the words stand out.