United States, (b. 1988)
Love Song to the Demon-possessed Pigs of Gadara
Then went the devils out of the man,
and entered into the swine…
— Luke 8:33, KJV
- Brave and grazing, the grass tread almost to dirt,
- you took on what was given to you.
- Teach me to sleep, and I will teach you to swim.
- The demons asked to leave
- the man—naked, shackled
- then unshackled,
- living in a sandstone cave outside of the city,
- his long hair knotted and stringy, his torso and arms
- cut with stones he wouldn’t unclench.
- He begged only mercy, begged only to be left alone—
- but the Good Lord chooses who to save.
- Maybe it’s one of those stories:
- you in the wrong place
- at the wrong time, heroes only because you had to be.
- Show me how to be blind, and I will show you how to resist.
- Just offshore of the Sea of Galilee, it was overcast—
- the air humid, full of electricity.
- The soft sound of your hooves pressing into dirt,
- your hoofprints holy and blameless,
- —I swear, in the light,
- you were beautiful there on the hillside
- becoming filled
- with them, the whole of your bodies shaking.
- Give me your courage, and I will give you my name.
- The silence just before and just after,
- and the black eyes as you leapt—
- no protest, no acceptance either.
- You ran almost in unison,
- a dance without music,
- a curtain call,
- and the crowd standing knowing this is what happens
- once we find beauty:
- we must watch it leave.
About the Poet:
William Haliburton Fargason, IV, United States, (b. 1988), is a poet, editor and educator. Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (2020), winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2020 Florida Book Award in Poetry (Gold Medal).
Fargason’s poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. His nonfiction has appeared in Brevity and The Offing. He received two awards from the Academy of American Poets, a scholarship to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a 2018-2019 Kingsbury Fellowship.
He earned a BA in English from Auburn University, an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland, and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University, where he taught creative writing. He is the poetry editor of Split Lip Magazine. [DES-01/22]