Lewis Freedman’s “I Want Something Other Than Time” is one of dozens of poems by the same title, published in his book of the same name. In the forthcoming special edition, each poem is in the same arched style, traced back to its initial composition, by hand, on a curved diagonal in the poet’s notebooks. Each poem also has a metaphysical fixation, performing a sticky reckoning with matters of being and time, rendered in language that travels quickly and surprisingly between the casual and the philosophical. In this iteration, it’s the question of death, and its seemingly indefatigable forces, “the boys of death,” that is met with a poet’s sweet bewilderment. Selected poem by Anne Boyer
I want something more than time
By Lewis Freeman
there is no victory
about death, guys.
The boys of death break free
becoming uncategorizable
again again
in the end an elastic domain,
artifice for us.
I was recruited to be a poet, but our world,
one of indefinite centers, has all the imitation,
gnosis and intermediaries that could burn (even
this exceptional fatigue). Whatever. There
not being spliced to reveal more to us,
we still need private languages to support
eros in touch, pass ourselves
tuning, to pass as imminent the sonorous things.
The sun, you say, is still unintelligible.
I’m like, ditto the father. All
these alchemical codes
signing up for
lives on thoughts,
climb
time.
anna boyer He is a poet and essayist. His memoir about cancer and care, “The Undying,” won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. lewis freedman is a poet currently living in Tulsa, Okla. Recent books by him include “I Want Something Other Than Time” (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021) and “Residual Synonyms for the Name of God” (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016).
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