Thrush Poetry Journal
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Jeff Whitney

[Whatever becomes of the form of a town…]

Whatever becomes of the form of a town 
at least it was enough.  All bone and yaw 
and luck.  Call it: theory of the soul in storm.  
A dangerous dream people have or 
a country where any dream is a danger.  

Here, you will note, is my problem with light.   
It isn’t enough anymore.  Consider this the salt
song a bird never built deep in my throat.  
This side of the century, beneath a single light 
burning, a pile of figs leaks flies into evening.  

Think: The car that brought you here
still runs.  The wild dogs have been shot.  
The chickens have gone to bed.  

Sometimes in sky this purple I count the storms 
that never came.  I call them perfect.  
Even while they shatter like anything’s bone.




[There are griefs worth repeating…]

There are griefs
worth repeating.
Doors that open again
onto different yards,
another neighbor stooping, 
another widow 
picking up her mail.  

This is the story 
of what didn’t grow wings.  

Not so much
beautiful as necessary.

The girls who eat lunch
at Old Loomis Quarry.
Under clouds the color 
of pope smoke their 
skirts spread like
the opening of flowers, 
like tall doors tossed 
to a peopleless hall.  

The sadness is getting 
redundant.    Beautiful 
things fill every vacancy.

Time, Hass wrote,
is your mother 
in a blue dress.




Jeff Whitney is a graduate of the University of Montana's MFA program and a co-founding editor of Peel Press (www.peelpress.org), a home for genre-bending literary book art.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Devil's Lake, Salt Hill, Sugar House Review, and Verse Daily.  He lives in Portland, Oregon.




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