Hannah Rego's "I’m On My Way to My Doppelganger’s Birthday Party,"
Thoughts on the moment-of-writing.
a note: because Substack’s formatting is weird, it doesn’t always encode spaces between stanzas. I marked them here with a “\” — if you want to read the original poem, use this link.
I’m On My Way to My Doppelganger’s Birthday Party,
and I’m early.
I can’t remember
her name. Theresa. Same name
as a close friend in Kentucky,
a Taurus I boiled oxtails with
who is finally letting herself fall
mutually in love with my brother.
Maybe that’s why I keep forgetting —
the name already full of her
broken femur & self-lauding of Molly Queen,
of her unbelievable ability to listen.
\
I worry she can’t feel this love
when we talk about anything else.
I worry that when I keep the closest
moments of all people in my head,
that they are reading my mind
& doubting my ability to understand them.
\
Because I’m thinking too often about our backs
curled the same way & his hands, same
size as mine, kneading the back of my neck,
or about the lesbian couple, one going
down on me while the other watches,
her face close to mine, & how her
dad is only lucid some days now, &
I should always think of that instead.
\
This is how I live out love through fear
of failure. And when I spread it out before me,
it’s only the two of swords
I see. No cups, no lovers, just her arms
crossed in front of her, swords raised — poised
to cut from two sides.
If I am caring, am I caring the right way?
Is there some amount of goodness
I chase to fill the well
only I fit inside?
\
I don’t mean to mention the subway,
but sometimes I have to meditate
just so I’ll stop ogling every wall st asshole’s
shoes. Oxfords. Brown boats, little strings.
My mom got me two pairs
of men’s shoes before I moved & I thought she’d finally
understood something. She did. On the phone
she’ll say, I get sick now whenever I see that,
about gender
appearing on any documents
\
This week I entered the kitchen
to work with the men. I learned
the easiest way to cut a shallot &
the hardest thing to learn about cooking
is that it is a foreign language
chef said two times.
Oui, this speaking with my hands
gets harder every time.
\
I’m on my way to my doppelganger’s birthday party,
& in the Lyft we pass a neon pizza
sign & pizza smell fills the car, & I think
of the old walk from university to home
past a tomato sauce factory, & how it always smelled
like hot tomatoes. I don’t know yet what I will do,
but I want to do something worth telling you about.
So I am sure I will. I don’t know yet that no one
at the party smokes, that a closeted girl from Baltimore
will tell a story about a silicon baking sheet melting,
about to catch, or that I will, while lighting a cigarette,
catch my hair on fire.
\
Theresa, my doppelganger, I met at a bar.
I walked up to her & said,
Sorry if this is weird,
but we look exactly the same.
\
At the restaurant, there is a server
who in the summer I dressed
almost exactly like. I mean,
we were already dressing like each other —
semicasual men’s pants, patterned button-ups.
But I button top button always,
but sometimes I wear tights under my shorts,
but sometimes I am so afraid of misperception
I’d rather be called baby in some bartender’s bed,
& I hate to bring up New York again,
but I didn’t leave my life
to start it right back over.
\
When I walk in public, I look
into the soles of the oxfords,
saying, sorry if this
is weird, but we look exactly the same.
\
The two of swords is angling
her swords over a bird not yet
in frame or an approaching enemy
or her own neck. Or at nothing
at all, & even if she knows so,
I might slice.
Originally appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry
Anyone who knows me knows I love Hannah Rego’s work. And Hannah knows how often I quote a line from one of their poems that reads “Who were you talking to, / little darling, / smallest glass of water for an ant?”
When you read that poem I just quoted or read today’s poem, you realize, I think, almost immediately, how it feels to come into contact with someone who, if you know Hannah, breaks into laughter at the tiniest moments, who is filled to the brim and over with care. Today’s poem is no exception. In their blurb that accompanies the original publication of this poem, Hannah writes:
Sometimes it’s fun to write a poem by trying to trap a moment in my head under a jar and trying to watch it crawl up the sides and trying, too, to pay attention to the smudges that appear in the glass
That’s a thing I love about this poem. It exists inside the moment it was written within, and, by existing in such a way, it overflows the moment, and becomes about more, so much more. I think, so often, that we are taught to process a moment or an image before we write, but not while we are writing. I think writing is often lent a degree of authority it never asked for — that it must become, by virtue of some institutional importance, the final say on the image it describes, and that, as such, it should be polished away from the trappings of the moment that contained that image. Hannah’s poem today is a testament against that archaic notion of writing. It says: here is the mind living through a moment, and, as such, it also says: here is the vast, enormous, compassionate capability of a mind trying to reckon, connect, understand, and love.
A testament to that fact is the way in which this poem is peppered with statements of sheer vulnerability, and the way in which such statements exist as a result of the observations and musings that ground this poem in a particular moment, the moment alluded to in the title. After the first stanza situates the reader in the reality of this poem’s moment, Hannah writes:
I worry she can’t feel this love
when we talk about anything else.
I worry that when I keep the closest
moments of all people in my head,
that they are reading my mind
& doubting my ability to understand them.
This move, so shattering and honest, extends out from the present moment. Just as these lines do, too:
If I am caring, am I caring the right way?
Is there some amount of goodness
I chase to fill the well
only I fit inside?
I think a less observant reader might say this poem meanders. I could imagine an ungenerous workshop reader saying the same thing as a critique of this poem. And I worry about the way such a critique does not do justice to the capability of our minds as readers, and the capability of Hannah’s mind as a poet. A beautiful thing about this poem is the very thing some ungenerous person might critique. This poem’s movement is beautiful. It is permissive. It is the mind moving from one object and one memory to the next as it moves through space and time and interaction. Hasn’t your mind done that? Haven’t you caught yourself thinking about a memory from years ago in another city while you ride the subway over the bridge in this city? Haven’t you caught yourself staring at someone’s shoes? Haven’t you walked down the street into an invisible cloud of perfume and then sobbed all the way to wherever you were going? This poem is that. It enacts that transitory nature of the mind becoming the heart, and the heart becoming the mind.
When Hannah writes something like “I’m thinking too often about” or “I don’t mean to mention” or “I don’t know yet what I will do / but I want to do something worth telling you about” or “I hate to bring up New York again,” they are engaging in one of the most generous acts a writer can engage in: they are opening the door and welcoming you, the reader, into the moment with them, this moment of intense and vulnerable creation, this moment of figuring things out. There is no distance here. It is flattened.
The generosity inherent in this poem reminds me of a poem I talked about before — Jess Rizkallah’s “Journal Fragments,” — and how she writes:
everyone i’ve ever loved has also felt like an alien inside their body
i love many people who love trees. fruits don’t stop growing
from the trees we write about. is the heart a fruit or is it a pit?
It reminds me, too, of Chen Chen’s poem, “Winter,” and the way he constantly repeats the phrase “I mean”:
I mean, up the throat, out the mouth: the fastest, the only way the powerful will let go of their shit.
I mean, my boyfriend & I are not into scat but if you are I hope your beloved produces the most fragrant, citrusy shit.
I mean, is “shit” more or less literary than “poop”?
I mean, one winter night I got sick & pooped the bed.
Both poems give themselves permission to be exactly what they are: figured out and figuring out, in the moment and surrounding it. Hannah’s poem does the same thing. It gives itself permission to enact the wholeness of the mind. The mind is on the way to a party, and by virtue of its awareness, it is somewhere else. It is forever capable of being reminded. It is forever questioning. It is forever trying to make sense of things. It is forever in love. It is the mind with the heart on its doorstep. It is the mind saying: hello heart, I’ve made room for you.
Perhaps I am talking about the same thing over and over because it is hard to talk about all the ways this poem touches me — the mother, the cutting shallots, the tomato sauce, the way it is impossible not to bring up New York. Each of these small graces of specificity exist within the present tense of this poem. If you made a mind map of this poem, it would be full of lines and arrows pointing to near and far off places. But each line would come back to another. Each arrow would reach out from something else. This poem is about one thing just as it is about so many more things.
Is a mind worth drawing a boundary around? Is a moment? Where then do our anxieties fall? Our neuroses? Our memories? What we allow ourselves to be reminded by, and how? In what way does definition limit generosity? In what way does it allow for it? How big is your love? What structures will it detour itself around in order to find a way to make itself known?
When I think of the craft of this poem, I am just left thinking of Hannah. I often think that a poem is, essentially, the blueprint of a feeling. When I read a poem, I often yearn not to be told how to feel, but, simply, to feel. I want to feel in the same way the poem is feeling. The in is important. I don’t necessarily want to feel the same way the poem is feeling. I want to be led to feel in the same way. I want to follow a mind as it walks down to the heart. Perhaps I am asking too much. But when I read a poem like Hannah’s, and I move through the world for just a few minutes in their mind, I know it is possible. And I am grateful.