Two poems
- Two poems
Self-Portrait of My Body Double
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;”
—Genesis, 26
Keep still, I beg my body double. How can I paint with youbouncing around?
He flashes my smile, frowns my frown, then wanders off to set fire to the kitchen.
So I begin with background: a swingset, a palace. I paint the first cloud that pops in my head.
Through it all, I feel I am dying, I feel like dying is what I’ve become.
When I step back, it isn’t half bad— the sun is sunny, chain-links link up—I’ve managed
to make things nearly as they are [End Page 112] but for that void of a center, that mountain of snow.
Yes? I answer, and swear my double is nowhere to be found.
He has shattered the mirror, stolen my leftovers, and left this note on the counter by the sink:
Forgive me. I despise you.It looks just unlike us. [End Page 113]
My Body Double Dies in a Single-Engine Plane Crash
My body double dies in a single-engine plane crash
and suddenly I have some explaining to do:
how exactly my double took off for Chicago,
vanished from radar later that day. Later that day,
I call my mom to say sorry I died out in Wyoming,
would you mind not taking questions from the press?
I phone my father, a pilot in his own right,
to ask if open-casket’s out of the question,
whether poor visibility was a plausible cause?
Before long, hordes of reporters climb my fire escape,
desperate to hear what not being feels like,
and if heaven was worth all those flames. [End Page 114]
Jared Harel lives in Astoria, New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, the Threepenny Review, the Gettysburg Review, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. He also plays drums for the Dust Engineers, a rock band based in New York City.
