A Crown for My Doppelgänger

with lines by Emmanuel Levinas

Starting from an I
am the living copy of you.
Face to face I saw you there
walking through water through me
my negative self-consciousness
sensing the precarity of simultaneity
the inevitability of resemblance
our curls
curling back on them
our breasts
wanting to stretch & hang
in the bathtub, touch one another
I made sure they wouldn’t
but we are in the world.

But we are in the world
they tell me, we are in the world
just on the other side of the knife
drunk in the shadow of the moon.
Drunk like you, drunk as you
in the car they proceed
further into the deeply
asphyxiating snow
the ice, the water
the rain pounding
chest pounding
head pounding.
Even as you I see no way
otherwise than being.

Otherwise than being
universally & relatively
quiet considering the screech owl
in the barn I avoid succumbing to.
The light comes in just so
& I see it & you see it as me.
By being you, I avoid entirely being
adolescent & urban
I become double, become we
we become a strange refraction
of desert through city
& vice versa
we become
something else entirely.

Something else entirely
toxic & radioactive.
Queer & specifically lesbian.
Lesbian & specifically mad.
Mad & specifically manic.
Manic & psychotically peering
in the mirror & seeing a man,
seeing two men & two erections.
Specifically gay erections. Bald & shiny
erections staring back at me.
One has a style
I recognize the other does not.
The strange one looks at me & I—
I respond to his expression.

I respond to his expression.
I tell him this occupation won't work.
I say some occupations kill
& some occupations die &
this one will do both.
He says death itself is a form of occupation.
He says my death will be the first thing I do
forever & you will do it with me.
He says our death will outlast every
radioactive particle, every half-life
every border & I can't tell him
he is wrong. I know
our death will live
beyond essence.

Beyond essence
because I don’t believe in it
or understand duplicity—it lives
within ampersand &
its objects, it stands in the doorway
after kissing me goodnight the light
behind it forming her silhouette in the
frame for the last time I turn away
onto my stomach & fall asleep
unaware as my double gets in the car
tosses her cell phone out
the window & I
am alone in our
totality & infinity.

Totality & infinity
look one another up & down
stupidly gawking—a deul dawning
in a different version of the same dream
you’re back in the doorway
you’re looking up at me from the lakebed
you say you’re back, but you can’t
just come back after all this time!
Where have you been?
In the lake with you, you say
In you, you say, I see my face looking at me
I say, I’ll be your mirror
you say, I’ll be your mirror
totality ad infinitum.