Hi, blog readers! It’s Wednesday, so it’s time for another Pick-a-Poem post here on the blog. Each week we feature a new poem for you to discover. These poems all come from Poetry Daily, which is a great resource for finding new poetry. This week we’re featuring The Doubles by Kara van de Graaf.
According to her bio, Kara van de Graaf is a Chicago poet. Her first book, “Spitting Image,” has been a finalist for many awards, including the Levis Prize for Poetry from Four Way Books, the New Issues Prize for Poetry, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, and others. Her work has appeared in various publications, such as The Southern Review, AGNI, and the Best New Poets anthology. She is currently an editor for Lightbox Poetry, an online educational resource for poetry in the classroom, which she co-founded in 2015 with the poet Richie Hofmann.
The Doubles by Kara van de Graaf
In the dressing room at Macy’s,
I run into all my old bodies.
We are reunited when I hear them
shuffling in the walls, sense them
beneath the dirty carpet. Their hips
lurching out of drywall. Their breasts
swelling against the concrete floor.
I congratulate one on her thin legs.
We commiserate about side-boob.
We try on dresses from the junior’s section
and laugh. Relive our proms, our red-haired
date who cried the whole night
about that other girl. We kiss. Arm-wrestle.
Bitch-slap. Wish we were never born.
When we part we look at each other longingly,
doe-eyed. The way two mirrors,
when you put them opposite, reflect
each other forever and ever.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem! For more posts like this, click here.
— Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan
