Thrush Poetry Journal
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Jeff Whitney
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​A Place You Once Lived
 
There are medals The Committee On Handling Tough Things 
gives out—best wistful look, best remembering of a difficult time, 
best walk across a bridge when you were sure life was getting away 
from you, most impressive use of the Local nomenclature 
for beer, mosquito, and so on. Awards, surely, for the way things get 
boarded up or torn down, rebuilt, voila. A steakhouse in the old 
department store. A new shop that sells cookies. There’s a local bear 
now, famous, who dips its paws into the river, cutting the town 
in two parties: KILL or SAVE. Something in the way the river freezes 
over then later runs away from itself. Something in the very careful 
lines the jagged earth draws along the sky. You came here to learn
something or you came here to be something but who knows
what that was, you think, surely impressing The Committee 
For Self-awareness And Honest Evaluation Of The Last So-and-so 
Years. Someone lost their purse here in 1940 and was reunited 
with it recently so drinks all around, everything is possible! 
Or at least being reacquainted with a past self is, you can 
walk up to them, shake their trembling hand. Does being here 
feel like stepping into your special suit, the one that allows for 
supersonic air travel and clinging to walls? It feels like nothing human
lived here once. And that’s true. Mountains and water and trees,
maybe a wolf-bear or a kind of bear-wolf. This strange whistling sound
once emitted from the air, of unknown origin, causing all to look up
for one minute in 1987. Then it stopped. Then history continued
having its way. But there was this moment, when it seemed like
the stories of movies could come true. Green aliens descending
with weird space sounds. Or a giant hypnotist in the sky. Total
government cerebral control. But nothing came of it and now
a farmer’s market every Saturday. Now the secret committee
I don’t have the name of or access to or reason to believe exists 
is watching in the folds and quarks of timelessness, making 
their notes, maybe humming an inscrutable tune, lifting a cup 
of coffee to non-existent lips, happy to be watching 
the things of the day take on their different shapes: people
going in and out of stores, picking up hats, trying them on.




Jeff Whitney's most recent collection is Sixteen Stories (Flume Press, 2022). His poems can be found or found soon in Adroit, Bennington Review, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and Sixth Finch. He lives with his wife in Portland. 




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