Double Identity

I want to stay at home
she wants to run the streets
she lives to rage and roam
I live with my defeats

She lives to run the streets
I sleep and meditate
I live with my defeats
She goes on crazy dates

I sleep and meditate
She loves a topless beach
She goes on crazy dates
I keep earplugs in reach

She loves a topless beach
I love pajamas more
and keep earplugs in reach
while she sprawls on the floor

I love pajamas more
She dares to drink and dash
When she gets on the floor
the DJs throw her cas

She dares to drink and dash
I microwave some soup
DJs will throw her cash
while I stay off the stoop.

I microwave some soup
She wears her lycra tight
While I stay off the stoop
my girl stays out all night

She wears her lycra tight
can’t wait to peel mine off
your girl stays out all night
I’m sickly, with a cough

Can’t wait to peel her off
She lives to rage and roam
Weird sisters, we’re one cough—
we are each other’s home.

    In her deliciously witty collection Double Identity you’ll find a snarky sonnet about a scale (that “Little silver jezebel,/ shiny platform sent from hell), an ode to Las Vegas, a ghazal for the Material Girl, the seven deadly sins, car-lot Steve on karaoke night and “fake names, hot sex, raw nights in hotel rooms.” And this pop-culture-meets-Emily Dickinson female narrator is tough as nails: “I know I’ve said this clearly:/ my body’s not your crutch.” Truly, Double Identity showcases a poet who’s a master of form, cadence and rhyme, as well as one who’s superbly funny and in tune with the fast-paced, kaleidoscopically confusing modern life we’re living.

—Nicole Rollender, author of Louder Than Everything You Love and Ghost Tongu

    In Double Identity Allison Joseph achieves an astonishing multiplicity of voices: some the preacher/teacher poet, some the enraged and engaged citizen, some the erotic lover both committed and unbound. These voices seem deceptive because they can sound simplistic on first reading, but are far from it. When one realizes that they appear in such contrary manner and contexts, “identity” within them is more than doubled. If we associate formal verse with Frost’s often-quoted “running in harness,” Joseph achieves something most unexpected within the very tightness of her formalism. We discover that stanzas, lines (with often breath-taking enjambment), and rhyme set the verse running and transform it into something wild, cutting free the very harness form means to contain. Double Identity delivers the mystery poetry ought to command, and commands utmost respect for the poet’s mastery of form.

—Adrian Koesters, author of Many Parishes