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| Issue 30: | Sept. 2025 |
| Poem: | 127 words |
| Duplex* |
By Susan Carroll Jewell
Married to Sisyphus
He drives too fast, I don’t drive fast enough. I walk near the rock, Death rides in the hubcaps, Death rattles nearby the rocks in the hubcaps. I want to live forever, the man does not. The man does not want to live forever, not Rolling a damned rock, bitten by a snake, Damned to roll a rock while bitten by a snake. Dust moves to stardust by the sweat of his face. Move the sweat of stardust from your dusty face! We are the weathered rocks, absurdly tethered To weather together, absurd rocks tethered. I push him up the hill, he pulls me down. He pulls me up the hill, I drag him down. He drives too fast, I don’t drive fast enough.
*Publisher’s Note:
The duplex was invented by Jericho Brown in 2018 and combines elements of the ghazal, the sonnet, and the blues into a poem of seven couplets. For details, see Gutting the Sonnet: A Conversation with Jericho Brown by Candace Wiliams at The Rumpus (April 2019).
See also an essay by Jonathan Yungkans here in MacQ (Issue 13, May 2022): “Look at How It Goes Together”: Personal Mechanics of Adapting Duplex Form to Content.
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