Jeff Weddle is an American poet whose work blends everyday realism with dark humor, tenderness, and a sense of human vulnerability. His poetry often reflects small-town life, memory, and the struggles of ordinary people, but he elevates these themes with wit and emotional honesty. Weddle’s voice is straightforward and accessible, yet layered with subtle irony and moments of quiet beauty. He often explores the contradictions of human nature—love and loss, failure and resilience, despair and hope—without resorting to sentimentality. His imagery tends to be grounded and concrete, drawing readers into vivid, almost cinematic scenes.
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| Jeff Weddle |
Another important aspect of Weddle’s poetry is its rhythm and conversational flow. His lines often feel like a voice speaking directly to the reader, creating intimacy and authenticity. At times, he embraces the rough edges of language, allowing his poems to capture both grit and grace. He has also been influenced by the Beat tradition, Southern storytelling, and a deep awareness of cultural memory. Overall, Jeff Weddle’s poetry resonates because it balances clarity with complexity, humor with heartbreak, and personal truth with universal themes, making his work both deeply personal and widely relatable.
Musing at My Kitchen Table
The sunflower in my backyard
does its best to be beautiful,
just as my beautiful children
do their best
at growing into other people
while I hang on to who they were.
Nothing lasts as long as a blink,
relatively speaking.
Even stars spin in the splinter
between infinite past and infinite future.
Etch yourself into stone,
but you will still disappear,
as will the stone,
as will every word ever imagined,
every flower.
What a task, to be alive.
A billion billion lost possibilities
stand ready in the shadows,
waiting in vain to give off sparks.
I sip my coffee anyway.
I Come from Another Country
America, I love you,
even though you are crazy.
There is still hope,
even though you are fearful and led by hate.
America, what happened to the hippies?
Did they all grow up to be assholes?
All this fascism
had to come from somewhere.
I know the churches push it hard.
They love their Jesus white,
pissed and heavily armed.
Why do you let people starve, America?
Wouldn’t it be easier to feed us
so we can all be ready
to do what is needed?
Wouldn’t it be better
to give everyone their medicines
and books and a place to live?
Oh, America, you insane bitch.
When did you become pitiful?
Maybe you need to take a pill
or get really drunk
or maybe just sober the hell up.
Maybe find a way to help people
instead of crushing them.
Read some books, America.
That might do the trick.
I know thinking is hard, but you must try.
I love you, but we can’t go on this way.
We must think of the children.
God damn you, America.
It’s almost too late.
A Day in the Burning World
I wish for a world
where the snakes are all eaten
by the flowers
or, if not that,
where the snakes are ashamed
of their venom.
I wish for a world
where the flowers rule by fiat
and the people do not notice,
because the flowers,
and the people, are good.
Look out your window
and search for your neighbors
doing noble things.
What you see is what tomorrow will be.
The bakers will bake their bread,
the teachers will try to survive another day,
the police will brutalize the poor.
When will we become men and women?
Our blood has thinned to catastrophe
and we are weak in our bellies.
The old songs, what about the old songs?
Perhaps we will march
and tell the world of our rage.
Perhaps we are crippled with sorrow.
The snakes and the flowers
care nothing for us.
Whatever happens,
we are on our own.
Let Me Slap Some Truth On You
Here’s what the world is:
It’s a book
somebody put back on the shelf
without marking their place.
It’s a book you find
and don’t even wonder
about it being old or read before.
The story is just the same for you
as it was for the last person
and, like them, you’ll only get so far
then put it back.
Then someone else will come along
and won’t even wonder.
That’s the world.
That’s how everything works.
Earthenware
Being clay, we are also water
and quite stout. Pliable, more or less,
but heavy with our particular inertia.
I would mold you into my desperate need.
You would dig your fingers
until I was somehow pleasing.
No one asks to be unburied,
if burial were needed to begin with,
so give me, at last,
that form that has never been.
So, give me purpose.
Being also stone and feather,
being flesh and friend,
you are a daft mystery.
The universe and the atom are one thing,
shadowed, a thing that cannot be unwound.
I will always love the comic opera
that you shared with me,
the odd gasp of a world
we died for.
Tuscaloosa and Everywhere
The minutes are too thick
by a good measure,
heavy and infesting our peace.
The stars demand
a backwards glance,
a backwards dream.
How did we arrive here,
out of all possibilities?
We must have stopped listening
to our own blood
and dismissed our own hearts.
The clock is no joke,
though it’s sentences are surprising
when taken as a bundle,
something that could be boxed up
and hidden on a shelf.
The faces of neighbors
and the faces of friends
are now the faces of strangers.
We are all incognito
at the Winn-Dixie,
trudging down aisles
in search of the thing
that will kill our hunger
without killing us.
We have arrived here together
and no one escapes.
All desire is the fantasy of the starry night,
when wine and beer were still fun,
art was made of blood,
people like us had a chance
and still knew how to love.
Brass Tacks
We never stop falling
through the hole in the sky
which we never see
toward no ending
which we believe is real.
But there is no sky
there is no hole
there is no falling
there is no motion
there is no we
there is no you
there is no me.
We never stop falling
through the hole in the mind
but there is no hole
there is no mind.
There is only is
not even was
not even might be
and not even is
if you want to know.
Not even that.
Our Lot
Arriving a poet
with no way of telling the world
except explosion,
except showing love
for odd things and people,
shadows and sunshine,
except bursts of rage
at what no one else sees,
until the voice comes
and then you say
what is inside
and no one hears exactly
what you mean,
just the off-hand joke
they want you to be.
The laughter hurts less
than the shrug
but it still hurts worse
than a beating.
Coming to earth
with that weight upon you
is a hard and luminous gift.
Arriving a poet
and forced to live in this world
where you almost fit
but don’t really.
You are an oddity.
If there are angels,
they peek at you in envy
from behind their terrible fingers.
If there are devils,
they invite you to their feast.
Arriving a poet
and leaving like everyone does.
I wish you well.
Our Happy Home
My brain understands
that people lived in this house
before my family
and that, someday,
we will be gone
and someone else
will sit in the exact spot
I now occupy,
doing things, big and small,
I will never know.
My brain understands
that this stranger
may be good or may be bad,
might write poems, same as me,
or love growing flowers,
or maybe prefer
being a lump on a couch
in front of a television.
My heart is less certain.
My heart says
I have been here always
with my wife and our children,
and we will be here always.
There are rumors I have heard
of people, just like us, dying,
but they make no sense to me.
Even this moment, even right now,
which will end in a blink,
lasts forever.
There was no before.
After is an illusion.
My family is the blood of this place
and strangers are unwelcome here.
Please Listen
Let’s say I met him in a bar, this angel.
Okay, this poet.
Sometimes it’s the same difference.
Let’s say we became acquainted.
Okay, the poet was someone
I had known slightly, years earlier.
Same difference.
Let’s say I was lost and hurting.
Okay, I couldn’t write.
Same difference, again.
Let’s say he told me what to do:
Observe, internalize, invent.
Say it plain.
Okay, it wasn’t a poet I met in a bar,
but a poem I found in a book.
Same difference.
Let’s say the message
was exactly what the poet meant to say
and he meant it for me.
Okay, I opened to a random page
in a random book and read.
Same difference.
Let’s say, a few hours later,
someone dropped by to tell me
there are no coincidences.
Okay, the algorithms on my television
suggested a documentary
on paranormal events
and it was all about synchronicity.
Same difference.
Let’s say I was able to write again,
all at once.
Okay, this is what I wrote.
Same difference.
Now, you are reading this.
Okay, now I am writing it.
Same difference.
This is our world, yours and mine.
Same difference.
What will you do now?
