Matthew McDonald

No More Doppelgängers

The friendliest games have no winners
            or losers  

or noise or action 
           so I play snap 
            with a quarter of the pack

only one each of numbers
           ace king queen and jack. 

The gameplay is essentially 
            dealing cards in reverse
           which is

admittedly
           a kind of stupid game

like entering your hometown airport
           with a suitcase full of dirty clothes 
            and tiny bottles of bathroom products 
            and sprigs of croatian rosemary
            and underpants coated with sand
            and minuscule sea shells 
            with parts of the sea still swishing inside them 

and receipts from restaurants you never would have found
            without taking a wrong turn and which 
            you’ll recommend to a friend 
            who’ll be disappointed
            by the food and brusque service 
            but not have the heart to tell you

and vacuum packed salami
            and a detailed history 
            of a cathedral under construction
            and a corkscrew from Hotel Bayerische Hof
            and matches from a cocktail bar 
            where the walls are all fish tanks

and coins in discontinued currencies
           and several kinds of charging devices
            and a quarter of a deck of cards
            and other stuff

all this only 
            to immediately exit the airport and take
            a taxi back home, unpack and post 
            stock photos of bridges online.

Daily an alien 
            pops by to ask me 
            what the point of the game is 
            and daily I tell it 
            it keeps the earth from crying

like a method actor who felt 
            so sad on set their tears seemed too real
            thereby incurring a pay cut 
            for shifting the script 
            from a work of fiction 
            to reality tv. 

Often at parties
            the only person as drunk as me
            is me.

Occasionally I raise my hand to slap
            a 9 as it lands on a 6. 

Occasionally someone tells me
            I look like someone else.

I never have the heart 
            to tell them 
            they’re wrong. 

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Matthew McDonald is an Australian musician and poet living in Berlin. He is the principal double bassist of the Berliner Philharmoniker and founder/editor of the online poetry journal berlin lit (berlinlit.com). Matthew gained his MA in creative writing from the Open University.