Dead Ringer

There are no illusions in the world of Charles Borkhuis. This is life without eyelids, and what we see is too disquieting for our own good, yet we can't look away. It's like film noir, whose frisson is a bad dream. Borkhuis’ work, though, is the zero hour. Sure, we can hit the bullseye at the amusement park, ring the bell. But we're just saps. Let’s face it, the real is not for sissies, or tough guys either. As for Borkhuis, his aim is dead on. Dead Ringer beckons us even when we'd better beg off, until we realize we’ve been living in his world without our knowing. Borkhuis’ poems exude their strange beauty.

—Burt Kimmelman

I’m often reminded, while reading Borkhuis’ work, of Derrida’s portmanteau word hauntology, a term which embodies the disjunction within being between presence and absence.

you can’t unfriend us the voices said we’re already your next thought

it’s true the present was already a memory

In this darkly introspective poetry, inner and outer, self and other, past and present bleed together. Dead Ringer is an unforgettable volume of indelible palimpsests.

—Tom Beckett