The Fool's World

Polar Duplicates 

 Poem by Zack Rogow 

 From the Archive of Saint Augustine's Magazine
Volume 2, No. 1 (2023).

You shove open all the windows
because you’re always too warm
but I’m too cold
so I bang them shut again

Your fingers dig among tentacle roots and dark loam
While my hands flutter across a silver laptop

You love to sleep under slowly spinning constellations
My idea of roughing it:
Central Park

I jounce right out of bed
You linger under the covers
flicking through your phone

“I like a Gershwin tune…”
and you like the Stones

I go for a lick of haiku
You gnaw through long novels

You ride your bike up Mont Ventoux
I pay a call on my favorite
Delacroix’s in the Louvre

And yet we meet every night
by the pixel glow of the TV
side by side on the sofa
we gradually lean into one another
and our hands
shy strangers
edge closer and closer
till at last
they clasp.