Pretending Not to Know

Poetry
​Nancy Freund

​Rilke said give me people with secrets or something like that.
I knew he sold his Super Bowl tickets for the cash, and
she slept on that beach with that boy at fourteen, and
she sat on that couch, East Village, pretending not to know the
two of them, both lawyers, horizontal, one supine, one prone,
were doing what they did.  And
she did… let him put his finger there, it wasn’t just she-would-have.
And she, how could she not,
regardless she was married, when you think of who he was. 
You surely understand. And she,
she jumped naked from a plane.  I imagine it. 
Injurious to my imagination.
You can tell a person anything when it still holds its fire from the past
its clay is warm and moldable.
Two thumbs, one tongue working words and magic.
Mr. Rilke gets what he requests.
All about betrayal and daring proofs of love.
​

​​Nancy Freund wrote Foreword Reviews finalist for Fiction Book of the Year 'Rapeseed,' (2013) 'Global Home Cooking'' which earned the Eric Hoffer Prize Honorable Mention (2014), and 'Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith' (2015), INDIEFAB finalist for YA Book of the Year.  Her writing has appeared in The Istanbul Review, Blood Lotus Journal, Necessary Fiction, Offshoots, The Daily Mail, Female First, and The Sirenuse Journal. Her radio interviews have aired on BBC London, World Radio Switzerland, and Talk Radio Europe. She holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing and an M.Ed. from UCLA.

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