Joshua Ware

Imaginary Portrait

Bent over the end

of a wood-paneled partition

and wearing nothing

but a pair of red cowboy boots

with intricate white-threaded designs

stitched into their sides, you cannot help

but look at ourselves in the mirror

when singular becomes plural and everything is

double of what is double

already: naked bodies entwining

imaginary into real.

Joshua Ware lives in Denver, CO. He is the author of Homage to Homage to Homage to Creeley, which won the 2010 Furniture Press Poetry Prize, as well as several chapbooks. Recently, his manuscript How We Remake the World: A Concise History of Everything, which he co-wrote with the poet Trey Moody, won the first annual Slope Editions Chapbook Prize. New work appears or is forthcoming in Country Music, Conduit, Cream City Review, diode, ILK, Nano Fiction, and Third Coast.