On a Return to Being a Polemic against Light Verse

I have met your doppelganger
and he is prettier than you.
He has one plain name
for every two you double
to become magistrate or plump uncle:
he walks this earth alone.
You bring your wooly crew
with you like a Mary.
The gay are all British,
but you, you are mari
and sodden, awful, best friends
forever with the other lovers
of birds and quaint albums of botany
while your wives sally forth
tanked with life, blue-eyed,
frankly better for being less interested
in being interesting. What started
as a hobby has become a terror
and an aesthetic. So too italics,
and capitals, and dashes.
Anyway, your doppelganger—
he wants a girlfriend,
he wants sex, he deserves both
despite the bowtie. It's the only
kind he owns. His laugh
is bigger than yours. He does
not need to drink, home or away.
He finds everyone absolutely
fascinating (not, as a default,
mediocre, though he worries
that dishrag in his pale white hands also)
and therein the difference:
he wants my story, any story,
a life beyond the little quill and brain,
also the Big Serious, also what may
seem easy, all that. This I invite
to dinner, your doppelganger. He
has the good grace to be eager.

Copyright © 2005 Arielle Greenberg All rights reserved
from Backwards City Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission