PERSON Poetry Reading: Doppelgänger, by Henry Zizmor

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

Doppelgänger

They say a name is just a word
until someone is hunted by it.
My great-grandfather carried Herman Jager
like a lit match
small, bright,
but dangerous if seen.

In the camp,
an Aryan spoke it
Herman Jager
and for a second
the name split open.
Two men,
opposites
one holding the gun,
one inside it
but the same sound
passing between them the day they were born
and all the days after.
As if the fire
was unsure which one
it was meant to consume.

After the camps, the name learned
how to blend.
It crossed water,
shed its weight,
smoothed itself
Herman to Henry.
This is how survival sounds:
quieter each generation.

And there is a third name
that never left.
Tzvi.
Deer.
Not a name
a state of being:
to listen for what hunts you,
to move before a branch snaps,
to vanish before extinction.

I answer to Henry.
I inherit Herman.
But Tzvi is the moment
the hunted
becomes the thing a fire can
never consume.