A contoured villanelle using “The Double Image Redux” by Julie Kane & Erica Reid
I let love force me into a rigid frame
as he squeezed braces onto my twisting teeth
I questioned if we’d ever be the same—
his probe in my mouth, his wires, his pitying gaze—
as you belittled me with your fashion critique
forcing me to the mirror, mocking my frame.
I swathed myself in taffeta, silk shifts, brocade
of pimples on my cheeks, Spanx under my sheath.
I worried my body would always be the same—
ate only carrots & celery for weeks—riddled with shame
by my frizzy hair, alarming period stains on my sheets.
My school pictures were never hung, much less framed.
You judged my small breasts & dimpled thighs. I had no claim
on self-love but when I slapped your cheeks
I no longer questioned if we’d ever be the same.
My palms still stinging, I had a taste of fame,
determined to claw free from underneath
love’s smothering fit, such an oppressive frame.
I think of your life. We’ll never be the same.
–
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021), and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.
Award-winning author, Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University, and co-founder of Beyond Bars: A Journal of Literature and Art, a Mellon sponsored literary journal for incarcerated writers and artists, Beth Gylys has published five books of poetry and three chapbooks, most recently After My Father: A Book of Odes.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth & latest chapbook is Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023) and editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024).