You Are Jeff

In addition to the obvious reiterations of key symbols, such as the road and the room, the poem acquires coherence and intensity through the repetition of minor details, frequently with intriguing variations in implication or context. Consider, for example, Siken’s use of the concept of light and the color red. Light permeates the poem even before the actual word appears: “The sun shines down” as the twins ride their “shiny red” bikes (Stanza 1). When one twin throws a lug wrench into the air, “it will catch the light,” which makes it look like a star (Stanza 4). The lonely boy is in a dark room, except for “a wedge of powdery light that spills in from the adjoining bathroom,” where someone sings, perhaps to the boy (Stanza 9). In the hotel hallway, “the lights [are] gone dim” (Stanza 10), and the heart is drowning “behind the red brocade” of a stage curtain (Stanza 11). As Jeff is deciding whom he loves, there is a “red door” and a “red dog,” and “the sun shines down” (Stanza 12). The wounded man buying bruise cream is comforted by “the afternoon light […] streaming through the windows” of the grocery store, which transforms into “the light inside you” (Stanza 14). Then, the light and the color merge in a particularly striking passage, which seems to describe someone being horrifically hurt: “Blood everywhere […] the red light hemorrhaging from everywhere at once. […] The red light streaming in from everywhere at once. […] Now look at the lights, the lights” (Stanza 15). There are a few references to light in the stanzas that follow, but this moment is the culmination of the deliberate and gradual intensification of the words “light” and “red” in the preceding stanzas. However one might interpret the connotations of these words at any particular moment in the poem, they present a good example of how Siken employs repetition with variation to develop minor details into a major effect.