Jeff Weddle

I Loved Lucy

The grocery store
gave a dime apiece
for the pop bottles

I collected
by the side of the road,

righteous money,

but I kept one back
to hold the wild flowers.

The flowers,
a Snickers,
and a lame
knock-knock joke
went fine with the sunset.

Next day in school
you blushed
as we passed
in the hall.

Jeff Weddle

The Truth About Cats

It is just as you
have always
suspected:

Cats compose poems
in their heads
most all the time,
poems so beautiful
we could not
hear them
and survive.

But they are wise enough
in their indifferent love
never to share them
with those who
provide food

while dogs
poor things

think of nothing
but baseball
and magic
and don’t give a damn
who knows.

Jeff Weddle loves cats but is more or less happy they do not recite their poetry to him. He teaches at the University of Alabama. 

Jeff Weddle

Only for Jill

Always, I try to write the poem
with the secret
and fail
the poem which will reveal itself
only to you
and bring you elated
to tell me that you have found
that mystery
you are certain
but I fail and the mystery
remains unknown
though, darling, that is why
every wrong word I write
is yours
filled with error, yes,
but stumbling along with love

Jeff Weddle is the author of several poetry collections and one collection of short fiction, as well as the Welty Prize winning Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of The Outsider and Loujon Press. He is associate professor of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. 

Jeff Weddle

And So It Goes

Naked and forgetting
the safety of sheets
she stands by
a dirty window
of dead flies
and open curtains

gazing at
the half-empty
parking lot.

A young man
walking to his car
fails to notice
her accidental gift
of beauty

his mind caught
on the one
he has abandoned
in a different room

while her puzzled lover
asks again
why she has left the bed

and the young man
starts his car
and pulls away

with no idea
where the night
will take him

and she says aloud
she is not sure
why she was
ever there
at all.

Visiting Home 

On the church steps
with grey and purple clouds
and the night songs
of animals
cars going somewhere
with their lights and noise
fireflies and a man running
as my father
back at the house
is caught
in a failing body
barely able to move
in his ancient black recliner
and my mother watches him
for signs of need
but seeing none
settles on
cleaning his denture
in this last
bit of smoke
when we are all
still alive
trying to understand
each mystery
except
how lonely
the end can be

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the 2007 Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.