By Jeff Whitney

In the movie the question is “What was that?”
and the Star Trek away team learns the answer
the hard way, losing usually a nameless face
in a red shirt. The procedure is figure out what
problem comes first, then what comes next.
In kindergarten it’s nap, eat, sandbox,
and actually, now, it’s not so different.
The issue of what to say versus what to feel
about what is said. The dilemma of training all your life
for something then, after it’s over, what to do with
your specialized equipment?
A shoe advertisement asks, “Who will
save your sole?” Nice one, shoe advertisement.
There are several ways to skin a thing,
it turns out, and none involves happy birthday
balloons. For a while you can live in a city
and have friends and feed the ducks
who assemble around you, a sort of
congregation. I didn’t know much at eleven
but I knew our neighbor Linda desired heaven
for we heathens, felt we were lost, how earnestly she tried
to save with her Saturday meetings and Rice Krispie squares.
Linda, if I let you down, I’m sorry, as much as my sole
loves good-faith attempts, I don’t think we’ll be beamed
up to the same ship. That’s okay. For a while we were together
on this team of nobodys, the plucky upstarts against
the biggest, baddest all-stars and headlines like “Dozens
killed waiting for aid,” and what god would allow
that, Linda? What person? might be the better question.
But every so often I put on my god hat
when a large enough spider is in a corner difficult enough
to reach at a late enough hour so for peace of mind
I decide to kill. How my apologies are well-meaning
and polite but don’t change anything, like saying sorry,
so sorry, while holding a neighbor’s head
underwater, as each night I go to sleep hungry.
I go to sleep hungry and dream of money.

---

Jeff Whitney’s most recent chapbook is Good Things Are Happening (GreenTower Press, 2026). Poems can be found in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and The Southern Review. A recipient of a 2025 NEA fellowship, he lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon. jeffwhitneypoetry.