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  • Ignis Fatuus*, and: Birth of the Doppelgänger*
  • Phillip B. Williams (bio)

IGNIS FATUUS*

He is one of many points of light              that seem, at first, distant enough      to lead me away from my loneliness, and towardthe flourish-stillness-flourish of the heart              when told imitate the varied stars that      have failed to guide us; now imitate everythingbeneath the stars.

But who is he? Phantom, filament at its brightest

before blowing out, pattern made pattern

because it was broken like a heart            can never be but say it anyway?

None of those. Deceit had a simpler face: violet

all around, every hemisphere familiar until turned.

The stars and what lied beneath them have fled, spectral. What little light poked through the branches has led you here. Lie down. I’ve tried to be kind to you by keeping the sharpest instrument to myself. [End Page 331]

BIRTH OF THE DOPPELGÄNGER*

It was on the highway, high beamscut across mangled ribs. Road kill

decorated the way home,stink-mouthed and stun-eyed. Opossums opened

and I stepped into them. I steppedinto the jowls of the dead, into

the stench. Flies scoured the decayedinnards like priests washing temple walls.

It was ecstatic, the flipped-over car,smoke and the circus acts of fly

buzz near a broken wolf, wolf brokeninto by pregnant swarms, wolf teeth

shined beyond gum swell above tongue,behind cheek, after blood spill

and my car spilled until all hell spilledand you want to know what the taste was like?

I’ll tell you at the crash’s wakewas a new life. My new self

bled out from the old self, leftbehind a husk, the heart’s slow drip

and stain. My lungs were drunk off exhaustand pricked by daggers of wood. One eye [End Page 332]

remained in the skull and stared at my new,wet self. Hair grew violently from

my fresh scalp. My new skin was violetand rolled up like panty hose

over the bones, over the muscles’ redand white, and this shiny new skull where I made

room for nothing but this body’sfirst words. See my mouth move, like this— [End Page 333]

Phillip B. Williams

PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS is a Chicago native and a Cave Canem fellow. He is the author of Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books). Currently, he serves as the creative writing fellow in poetry at Emory University and will be visiting professor at Bennington College for 2016–2017.

Footnotes

* Originally published in Callaloo 37.3 (2014).

* Originally published in KROnline (summer 2014). Reprinted with permission from Kenyon Review.

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