Matthew Freeman, featured in the new Ocean State Review

For Free

Once I came to in a fabulous bar
on Third Avenue to find a burning
cigarette resting on my ring finger.
I showed off that scar for many years,
put it on my tab.

You’re so dumb, Lacan would say.
I was gladly beat down and ripped off
three times in three years,
New York City.

Once I was in a cage of too much Clozaril.
It sure does slow the falling
down. Hard to beget. But you break
through, belligerent, put forth
what you’ve overheard and cannot
understand, wake up to no more fear
and a wonderfully blank page.

There’s a big open field
between you and New York now,
a bunch of ones and zeros, read and black,
and the secret is the social worker
tells you to fake blindness once more
to get on that bus for free.

Matthew Freeman on “For Free“:

Lately I’ve been thinking of poetry as one of the first recording devices…and you ask yourself, What shall I record? And how shall I make it pleasing? And I am drawn to some of the more intense experiences I’ve had, many of which were pleasantly dumb, like waking to see a cigarette’s burning on your finger…when I was young I was at a festival at one of the colleges here, and I told a friend, Someday I’m going to write about all of this! And, incredibly, she responded, I know. That gave me such strength! And so I try to be faithful to the people I’ve met and everything that’s happened.

Matthew Freeman‘s seventh collection of poems, I Think I’d Rather Roar, was just published by Cerasus Poetry. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri–St Louis.