BROADCASTS.com

Published: June 17, 2020, midnight

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Today We will look at "The Double Image" by Anne Sexton

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All questions or poetry suggestion, send to BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com

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Anne Sexton Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton

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Poem Link/Transcription: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53110/the-double-image

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6.

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In north light, my smile is held in place,

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the shadow marks my bone.

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What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,

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all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone

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of the smile, the young face,

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the foxes\\u2019 snare.

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In south light, her smile is held in place,

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her cheeks wilting like a dry

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orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown

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love, my first image. She eyes me from that face,

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that stony head of death

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I had outgrown.

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The artist caught us at the turning;

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we smiled in our canvas home

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before we chose our foreknown separate ways.

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The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning.

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I rot on the wall, my own

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Dorian Gray.

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And this was the cave of the mirror,

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that double woman who stares

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at herself, as if she were petrified

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in time \\u2014 two ladies sitting in umber chairs.

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You kissed your grandmother

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and she cried.

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7.

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I could not get you back

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except for weekends. You came

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each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit

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that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack

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your things. We touch from habit.

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The first visit you asked my name.

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Now you stay for good. I will forget

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how we bumped away from each other like marionettes

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on strings. It wasn\\u2019t the same

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as love, letting weekends contain

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us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,

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wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.

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You call me mother and I remember my mother again,

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somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

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I remember we named you Joyce

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so we could call you Joy.

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You came like an awkward guest

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that first time, all wrapped and moist

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and strange at my heavy breast.

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I needed you. I didn\\u2019t want a boy,

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only a girl, a small milky mouse

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of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house

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of herself. We named you Joy.

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I, who was never quite sure

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about being a girl, needed another

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life, another image to remind me.

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And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure

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nor soothe it. I made you to find me.

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