You Are Jeff

Everyone is Jeff in this poem, including the speaker and the addressee. At times, the male speaker might be talking to himself, to his male lover, or to all the men he has ever known: “They are the same and they are not the same” (Stanza 3). These words refer to the twins on motorbikes, but they are both called Jeff and “each Jeff wants to be the other one” (Stanza 3). In fact, “they’re not brothers, they’re just one guy” (Stanza 20), but the speaker is “all of them—Jeff and Jeff and Jeff and Jeff” (Stanza 23). Some Jeffs love each other. Some Jeffs are like each other. Some of them love each other because they are like each other. Or maybe the other way around. The poem speaks to the interplay between desire and identity. The two twins on motorbikes are positioned on the road “depending on which twin you are in love with at the time” (Stanza 1), but also “depending on which Jeff you are” (Stanza 3). Since the twins and Jeff are the same, or versions of the same, desire and identity become practically indistinguishable. At one moment the speaker asks, “Who do you love, Jeff?” (Stanza 12); soon after, the question becomes “Who do you want to be?” (Stanza 18).