Letter to My Lookalikes
Dear doppels/dear countrymen/dear last rockets’ glare:
Most days, my chalk feet stomp the land from crow
till cricket till humbug shouts a breeze, lifts every grain,
my footsteps erased, yet on I seethe to stomp again.
We beanbag men, we windmills of straw. You hate me/
I hate you/we hate us. If you howl, I’ll twist; if I bloat,
you’ll prick. Let’s wrap our fists with feathers and rags;
let’s cotton-ball our eyes, cut the twine from our throats;
let’s wander the forest, speechless and blind. Last night,
I had dinner with my hunchback self. He growled/cursed;
he pushed away his bowl of soup. By which I mean:
Most days, I can’t imagine why you feel the way
you do/why I feel the way I do. I fail again and again.
Countrymen, I confess: Most days I don’t think
of you at all. Instead, I post pictures of things I ate/
saw/bought. Look at me: jiggly-limbed/sugar-brained;
I’m a flesh-bellied system of world bits consumed,
attention craved. Crave this now, doppels: that night
you came home drunk/that night I came home drunk.
My father/your father sat us down on the couch/
choked us out against the fridge. Our bloody boy
knuckles: he let them bleed, kicked us out/he grabbed
the stink jar of ointment, ripped a T-shirt, wrapped
our hands. He was fuming/he was gentle. He said
you’re nothing to me/said you’re better than this/
said I love you/I love you/I will bury you alive.
Jeff Hoffman’s first book of poems, Journal of American Foreign Policy, won the New Issues Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. Forthcoming poems, fiction, and hybrid pieces appear at Barrelhouse, Bellingham Review, Hobart, and Smartish Pace.Header image by bloom, courtesy Shutterstock.
