Doppelganger
Maggie Smith
Everyone has a twin somewhere. Like a child
given up at birth, I look for my features
wherever I go. Doppelganger, you could be
on your way down High Street to the carryout
or in a village in Newfoundland. I know the luck
you bring, but I can’t stop seeking you out
like radio waves transmitting concentric circles—
a ticker tape of o-mouths spooling. Other self,
I want to project myself to where you are.
I want to float beside you and trace your shape
with my finger, like drawing a line on a bottle
of liquor. But you won’t feel me ruffling
your hair. You won’t look at me. You only echo
my movements, a sleepwalker. Other doer,
with you around, everything is slightly off,
like when Dylan went electric. The hours are
striped with light as yellow as old newspapers;
the moon is grainy as an obituary photograph.
Not quite a door, I stand ajar. I’m two places
at once. I’m watching a movie, but the person
playing me isn’t acting. Double walker,
you’re not so bad. You don’t have red eyes
and a black, v-shaped uni-brow like most
evil twins. But you won’t look my way. You speak
but not to me. Your voice, which is mine,
crackles like a phone call from another country.
–
Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005) and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005). She has received two Academy of American Poets Prizes, several Pushcart Prize nominations, and two generous fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. She currently works as an editor in Columbus, Ohio, and has new poems forthcoming in the Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, Indiana Review, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.
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2 Comments currently posted.
John Ajac says:
Dan Wuenschel says:
My doppelganger and I agree that this is how we’d like to think about our doppelganger should we be so lucky as to meet him. The way Ms. Smith ponders the detachment with oneself when faced with one’s own image is here a fresh look, via the doppelganger device, yet it is quite familiar to the reader. Her final two lines remind me and my doppelganger of how it seems always and everywhere that we barely recognize our own voices, if at all, when played back from a recording such as when an answering machine plays our messages. Excellent selection!
I like the way Maggie talks to herself as projected upon an imaginary double.