Marsh Light
BY DAVID FREEMAN
After Emily Skaja
Does it take shelter to organize shelter
Is it true that you can love a boy
Against his will & get away
With it if the town is small enough
And the fathers pretend not to know
When did I know what had happened?
Was I a dull sound a moth light
Asleep in the marshland Did I walk through
The settlement forgiving everyone because I wanted
To feel clean only once
It is a sickness I think
This wrong kind of longing
How I scrubbed what had happened like I was scrubbing
a cup after dinner
What I wanted was my sainthood
To have been loved once and loved only gently
My boyhood left intact in its bed
She said don’t tell anyone and though I didn’t say yes
I stayed quiet
Though now I’ll tell anyone who asks me
About how marshes don’t freeze in the winter
I’ll take my stone gift down off of the counter
I’ll raise the cup to their lips and say
drink
The Townhouse
BY DAVID FREEMAN
My brother was violent, then dead.
My father said he strangled his classmates.
My brother strangled his classmates.
He liked to leave their presents unopened.
My brother as a present unopened.
I almost visited when he was alive.
I should have visited when he was alive.
Though he would not have known it was me.
His helpers would not have known it was me.
Each night they helped him swallow his dinner.
One night he could not swallow his dinner.
The city came but his mouth was closed shut.
My brother is a brother closed shut.
My brother is not violent, but dead.
Seven Manifestos on Pleasure
BY DAVID FREEMAN
There is a ghost inside of your body who is waiting for your body to die.
He doesn’t mind it. Each year that passes, for him, is a pleasure.
The cow is facedown in the field. When it storms, the rain hits his hide.
Yes, he is dead, but his loose snout, in the rain, still dances with pleasure.
It is a fortune to remember the dead. It is also a fortune
To forget them. Only one of these fortunes is pleasure.
On a dark beach, a seagull eats from a carcass. His bill is covered in whale.
If you loved the whale, you must also love the seagull’s slick pleasure.
What does it mean to be pleasured? It means to be suddenly brought
Out of your ghost. What is a ghost? A deposit of outdated pleasure.
In this stanza, the whale is alive. Look — he is eating the seagull.
The cow too is alive. Smelling the rain, his tail swishes in pleasure.
As a boy, I pretended to see a ghost, whose name was also David.
To lie marks the end of believing. And also the beginning of pleasure.
