Poem: "The Double Boy"
The Double Boy
*
The clock chatters; with no beating heart
Lung or breast how can she tell the time?
--Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, “The Absent Girl”
The double boy takes off his clothes.
He sees his body in the nude
face of the glass whose back is covered.
He points the mirror, like a telescope,
and the glittery dress waves
its short inverted sleeves.
No one is in the room.
The boy in the glass could get into the dress in the glass
and into the inverted bed.
The bed is rocking gently like a ship.
His body waves.
His bones wave like a flag.
*
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