{"id":2612,"date":"2026-04-23T16:52:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T21:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=2612"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:25:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T19:25:17","slug":"two-poems-by-jeff-whitney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=2612","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems by Jeff Whitney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jealousy<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019 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\u2019t see,
of a remote island and a shipwreck with dolphins leaping
in the foreground. I\u2019m told it\u2019s 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\u2019m 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\u2019ll 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\u2019t 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\u2019s
hand. How to touch magic like that and not
burn, and live to tell anyone who will listen about it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n\n

Study In Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no cure for certain things anxiousness desire
unless the place for those things is eradicated I spent weeks<\/p>\n

forcing my tongue to roll the Spanish double R saying dog
dog in the shower until something happened the beautiful thing<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

a great battle determined the forking of a language the appendix
had its final useful year now I drive by fields of wild rabbits <\/p>\n

waving hello at my colleagues so industrious in staying alive being
fruitful may not be what every god wants some god might want us <\/p>\n

to roll our R\u2019s into ribbony arias until the cows come home
an arm reaches out from a text and wraps its hand <\/p>\n

around the back of our neck whispers first step second step
third step and so on but that\u2019s crinkled paper in a gift box<\/p>\n

keeping the delicate glass intact the way our drama teacher kept
the play alive sewing costumes prompting lines she must have felt<\/p>\n

like god the least appreciated the most harried our lord and savior
of the bright light maybe she\u2019s somewhere now in a hospital\u2019s waiting<\/p>\n

room her brother is sick no her mother no her neighbor whom
she\u2019d been sleeping with it was love she thought she didn\u2019t know <\/p>\n

love could find her she thought she was a mountain a nomad a nothing
she\u2019d been at Stonewall she\u2019d protested the sainthood of corporations<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m thinking of her now if she\u2019s real
that\u2019s an accident her name was Connie when we dropped a line<\/p>\n

or missed a mark she would say there\u2019s no cure for stupidity
she would say it like that only differently<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n

Jeff Whitney\u2019s most recent chapbook is Good Things Are Happening <\/em>(GreenTower Press, 2026). Recent poems can be found or found soon in AGNI<\/em>, Alaska Quarterly Review<\/em>, Gulf Coast<\/em>, and The Southern Review<\/em>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He can be found on Twitter @JeffWhitney2 and on Instagram @jwhitney5.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the right mood \/ I can be jealous of mud …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[110],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}