Jealousy
At least I would be good at one thing. In the right mood
I can be jealous of mud, of creatures squirming free
between roots like swimmers in their separate lanes.
In the way The Grinch looked down on Whoville
I can look from afar at others’ success, get downright
nasty in my revulsion. My heart could shrink to a pistachio
in circumference. In high school that trick Trevor did
holding two toothpicks in an open hand, somehow
making one jump, and dance. The other kids could spot
the reality while I, envious of them, floundered in bitter
unknowing. Yes, I may do a little clap when the world
comes clear for the child looking at the poster
with the hidden image, the one I can’t see,
of a remote island and a shipwreck with dolphins leaping
in the foreground. I’m told it’s beautiful. But keep
your beauty. Let me live a while in this
satisfying feeling. Let me glow in the dark
of imagining taking my shirt off at the pool party
effortlessly, with a smile, like a pornstar, not hunched over
in the shadows, not this mad dash like a raccoon darting off
holding a too-big scoop of dog kibble. Sure, I love what you do
in your spare time. How you know what a beauty berry is
and point them out. I’m sorry when I hear blackberry
I want to wring all the genius out of Robert Hass, soak up
his worth, make his victories mine. I guess I could work
harder but there is probably a scientific study on the benefit
of wanting. Maybe someday there will be an Olympic team,
my ticket to Athens, where I’ll visit ancient fountains
and become devastated by columns blanched from so many
suns, envious of their degradation, their insistence on some kind of
oh, I don’t know, permanence, beauty. When frogs call out at night
then stop when footsteps near: I could be jealous of that.
Of the way water boils, or the single red apple in the witch’s
hand. How to touch magic like that and not
burn, and live to tell anyone who will listen about it.
Study In Time
There is no cure for certain things anxiousness desire
unless the place for those things is eradicated I spent weeks
forcing my tongue to roll the Spanish double R saying dog
dog in the shower until something happened the beautiful thing
about a globe is the whole world touchable in front of you and you
somewhere on it having these thoughts where one thousand years ago
a great battle determined the forking of a language the appendix
had its final useful year now I drive by fields of wild rabbits
waving hello at my colleagues so industrious in staying alive being
fruitful may not be what every god wants some god might want us
to roll our R’s into ribbony arias until the cows come home
an arm reaches out from a text and wraps its hand
around the back of our neck whispers first step second step
third step and so on but that’s crinkled paper in a gift box
keeping the delicate glass intact the way our drama teacher kept
the play alive sewing costumes prompting lines she must have felt
like god the least appreciated the most harried our lord and savior
of the bright light maybe she’s somewhere now in a hospital’s waiting
room her brother is sick no her mother no her neighbor whom
she’d been sleeping with it was love she thought she didn’t know
love could find her she thought she was a mountain a nomad a nothing
she’d been at Stonewall she’d protested the sainthood of corporations
I don’t know why I’m thinking of her now if she’s real
that’s an accident her name was Connie when we dropped a line
or missed a mark she would say there’s no cure for stupidity
she would say it like that only differently
Jeff Whitney’s most recent chapbook is Good Things Are Happening (GreenTower Press, 2026). Recent poems can be found or found soon in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and The Southern Review. A recipient of a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon. For more info, visit www.jeffwhitneypoetry.com.
He can be found on Twitter @JeffWhitney2 and on Instagram @jwhitney5.
