Doppelgänger Portrait

Everything reflects.
See the eye split
on the edge of swamp
water. See the black
                                                        	iron breastplate’s liquid 
                                                        	glint, the umbrella
                                                        	architecture of a bat’s
                                                        	wet wing. Everything 
fragments. See the skin’s
crepe etchings, the husk
of vermillion bedcovers.
                                                        	See us twinned in acute 
                                                        	accents: a platinum band 
                                                        	binding our heads together 
 
as we shear the difference
between microscope
and magnifying glass, as we
                                                        	rise over nightshade
                                                        	to uncover those who once
                                                        	cowered like blanched skulls.
 
When we emerge from medieval
drapery, slipping out of our daytime
skin, we reveal
                                                        	dried seed pods under our feet
                                                        	as a silk slip floats like a blue jay
                                                        	across the courtyard. Our faces tilt
toward bestial glow as I release
the scorpion from my mouth
into your gloved hand.

Simone Muench is the author of seven poetry books, including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande; Kathryn A. Morton Prize), Wolf Centos (Sarabande), and The Under Hum (co-written with Jackie K. White; Black Lawrence). She is a recipient of an NEA poetry fellowship as well as fellowships to VCCA, Prospect St. Writers’ House, Ragdale, and more.

Jackie K. White is the co-author, with Simone Muench, of Hex & Howl (Black Lawrence Press, 2021; Society of Midland Authors Honoree) and The Under Hum (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). Her collaborations have appeared in Conjunctions, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Ecotone, Salamander, Pleiades, and others.

Appears In

Cagibi Issue 29