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  • Ogygia, and: First Week
  • David Freeman (bio)

Ogygia

I forget it often, but amidst his murders and conquests,Odysseus was stopped on an island in the Mediterraneanwhere he was raped every night for eight years.

    Fruit as big as the eyes of an elephant.    Paan leaves as big as the fruit.

Kept in a cave by the sea, Odysseus cried every nightwhen he was told he could not go back to his wars.

    A murderer's hands like two trumpets. A man's pubic    bone buttered and plated and trimmed.

I never liked the Odyssey, but that's nobody's fault.

I never cried on an island, though I was not even held for a day.

    Rather I was held for one hour, in a bedroom closet,    while I listened to a woman I knew have dinner with

    her father, my semen still stuck to her clothes. I

thought of nothing in that hour but ofwhat they were eating. How the plate would taste

if I licked it. How a slice of an apple can be told it islovely, before it is slipped quietly into a mouth. [End Page 132]

First Week

for Doug Jones

Tuesday, I argue with a man on the interneton a message board for my favorite tv show

We argue about the new season, and about

what has happened to me, which hesays is not possible

And which I tell him has happened

We both love the tv show very much

We tune in each week to watch it get worse

________

Wednesday, I cannot be touchedor I will shake and not come back until morning

Don't touch me there, I tell my loverand she touches me anyway

She apologizes later, but I am not thereI am watching from somewhere else

waiting patiently to return to my ribs

________

Thursday, I watch the cars go by [End Page 133] and I cry in the kitchen at work

I work on a poem about a boy and his bodywhere the body is useless and carried around

My friend reads it carefullyHe says he'd like to see the body behave more joyfully

I delete the poem before bringing it back

________

Friday, the trash bins fill up on the sidewalk

and my lover gets angry when I say I want to stop seeing herSo I agree to continue. She teaches me new words and I repeat them

I fall asleep watching the reruns

________

Saturday, I check the message board of my favorite tv show

and the man has deleted his comments

I delete mine too

that explain to nobody how a boy can be raped by a woman

Physically, they say, with one body on top of a body

And now even my picture, beside it, is gone

________

Sunday, I work all day [End Page 134] and at night I watch my favorite tv show

It's a good show, but it used to be better

It used to be loved by everyone. Now it feels like

it's just loved by me. [End Page 135]

David Freeman

David Freeman is a poet, playwright, and essayist from Long Lake, MN. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review Online, the Massachusetts Review, Sinking City Lit Mag, and the Honey Bee Review. Visit www.davidefreeman.com.

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