Poem for Two Voices


︎︎︎ Coleman Dues

︎ JUNE 13, 2022


             I am doubleheaded
    you be Gram and I’ll be Emmylou
          always hearsing and rehearsing     like
                      always I persuade you
I’ve been having strange dreams which compel me to sleep more
          you have shoe tassels and modest castles
                   have pretentious unpretentions     I am
  a strange motherfucker except in the dark beer of remembering
    well your flashlight fell down a bottomless well
                                               the kind of beer I’d have a beer with
    and well you mistook it for truth    these scenes
                            are all floating on chains
         you dislike sweet things and it makes you sooo interesting
the voodoo lily and the hands and the
                       hands but the blind floating hands
  you compulsively imagine being bludgeoned by a stranger
                       the subinterval at my head
      I snipped it away like a haircut    the sound of thinking
                     is too loud       there is
      an alternate universe
                                           where we are married































Coleman Edward Dues
is the associate content producer at the Academy of American Poets, where he produces Poem-a-Day. His work is published or forthcoming in Fence, Black Warrior Review, Always Crashing, and Annulet, among others.