“Double,” a Rumpus Original Poem by Jeff Hoffman

Double

I drink a Belgian and explain
to my father, over the phone,
why several of his thirty-nine

virtual friends have doppelgänged
themselves. “It’s a thing now,”
I announce. “It’s just a joke.”

The line goes silent. An apocalypse,
outside, of parrots. Hundreds greening
a green eucalyptus. “They must

not know then,” my father says,
as the parrots, in unison, scatter.
“When you see your double, you die.”

—Jeff Hoffman

Read the Rumpus Review of Jeff Hoffman’s Journal of American Foreign Policy.