Sexual Twin
We are different, me and him.
He isn’t the shadow I drag
across sidewalks after escaping
apartments. He calls himself
The Diamond Cowboy. He makes
appearances in vanity mirrors
when my drinking gets bleary.
Didn’t you come for a good
time? he asks, Not just here,
but in life? Sometimes at night
his swan-neck spurs
approach my back porch
like singing wind chimes.
Why are you holed up
when there are trails
and paths to discover?
But he never sticks
around for the aftermath.
He doesn’t want to be
my friend, either—
only wishes to vanish,
and then enter.
He isn’t the shadow I drag
across sidewalks after escaping
apartments. He calls himself
The Diamond Cowboy. He makes
appearances in vanity mirrors
when my drinking gets bleary.
Didn’t you come for a good
time? he asks, Not just here,
but in life? Sometimes at night
his swan-neck spurs
approach my back porch
like singing wind chimes.
Why are you holed up
when there are trails
and paths to discover?
But he never sticks
around for the aftermath.
He doesn’t want to be
my friend, either—
only wishes to vanish,
and then enter.
Jeffrey H. MacLachlan has had recent work appear in New Ohio Review,Eleven Eleven, The Minnesota Review, among others. He teaches literature at Georgia College & State University. He can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack.
Francis Bacon, “Sleeping Figure,” 1959, Royal Academy of the Arts.
