Poems, a few

Two attempts at the same poem:


Mirror Girls

There’s a truth
to some of those rumors.
The truth to it is—we really
are a freak. Freakesque
if you will, we are
utterly unique, is
unique in our one-
ness but the fact
or truth, if you
will, of it is that we are,
we is, or I am, far
far more freakesque
than they’d like you
to know. If you all knew
the truth, the fact, if
you will, of my life, is
this, it is this: when we
look at our sisters we
do not glance at each
other. You see it now
don’t you? The honest
to god truth is when
we stand back and back
and back and at a perfect
angle so that it looks
as though a mirror is
traveling back and
back and back to show
us repeated but add a
mirror to that and you’ll
see that we are repeated
infinitely. I am repeated
infinitely and split into
three parts that carry on
back and back and so on
at an angle, so that the
mirror is always
available for I am
the vainest girl
in history. One
wasn’t enough,
so you’ll all
get, all you’ll get
is three of
me.


 
Dime a Dozen

Pinning up my blackbird hair
bobby pins purchased at CVS
for fifty cents a bundle
along with the dye, which
sprays on and washes out
of our long, blonde curls.

Fake lashes, long, to accent
an assumed youth preserved
in each of our faces, making it
one face. Drawing us out
and in to be alike. We pinken
our cheeks in the apples.

Carefully equipaged, our
bosoms are taped painfully
tight. We train ourselves to
speak as one, to finish each
other’s sentences, high and pre-
pubescent from doll-sweet lips.