It makes us into what we recognize
of ourselves but supposedly are not,
which means suppressing…
how this time, the reputedly reflective
monologist was rippled so strangely
that he didn’t even think he resembled
the double—a phantom as unaware
as the hair the hand runs through,
seen from such an angle
that it was jostled by black-
backed gulls shadowboxing
across the docks and shivered
by prismatic sun slipping
into Gravesend Bay—as if
some brilliant sweat
had been swept off the brow
into the ocean, becoming part
of everything dissolving. So
he thought about something else.