IMAGE: Roz Murtha

In Which you Dream of Yourself as Other

Charlotte O'Brien

Charlotte O’Brien is a queer writer with an MFA from Pacific University. Her poems recently appeared in The Midnight Oil and Epiphany literary journals. She has essays in The Rumpus, Mutha Magazine, and The Manifest-Station.  She is a finalist of The Midnight Oil and Tennessee Williams poetry contests. 

All night, you are split 

in two / parts / facsimiles / identical

twins / matching fingerprints 

like making eye contact with a stranger

then recognizing your reflection

in the mirror / your

skin / peeled back

as if looking through a microscope / into the core of a thing

not / the women / you’ve lived in

or, the man / you become when you’re holding 

the hard / cock of yourself. not the self of possession:

           your mother’s girl / father’s / daughter

           mother / sister / wife / animating 

           whatever comes / first—

           a prick or a ladle, 

           red lips or laundry 

           diamond fingers, 

           stockinged thighs, 

           aproned lap. tit in a mouth, 

           finger in the geyser, head in the oven,

the carefully taped-up doors to your children’s bedrooms—.

not the illusion. / like using the wrong tools for the job

or building your home with sticks,

then fortifying it with fire.

instead, you are solved / a cracked code / a puzzle 

game /           essence / 

                      essential / plural / an other / self

the way ghosts become themselves / after death— 

pushed through / identical / but / new/ly 

minted / as if they were just born / 

into their true self

the way bamboo will push through / 

any thing / even, cement—

propagating itself / even as you’re pulling it up / 

leaves like knives / creaking and whispering / 

a subterranean murmur. like, yeah, whatever, bitch, 

I’ll be back. just watch me. 

and you’re watching yourself / in a sweater 

and jeans. as if you were just born / 

into adulthood /

just standing there / dying open.