Jordan Stempleman


Waving, the head turned behind


To conclude, a nakedness of the possible.

Left over with things that disparity

senses to be wrong. A test through which some use

totalizes something here. Young plant

with eyes and emigrations. I depended on siblings,

once I understood we were to never live

in the same place again. It’s all there,

circled as if purchased and tallied

with its condition lying somewhere between

what an item calls for and what an item calls for

as its use. Certain, there was once a duster overhead.

A stand in for motion, a passage so needful of distance

and the success that follows illumination.

Certain verities in frequency are from the numerous

and wonderful and returning.

Along the way there’s receding.

A puffing birch sheds bark, and the social ground

is what we sat on, more so, when younger.

With ground and phenomena, with water

and fields, and with what dupes attraction

when each of these elements reshapes and departs.




The Promise to Stand


As into view will come the reflex

that looms things large. If the tactic

included, weighs plain as importance,

there may be a sickness that appears

from the hopes of permanence.

So natural a reception to burn right through

the greeting, the union of the rutted patch,

hopefully, yielding to the laws of newness.

The secrecy undetermined, caring for its intrusion,

until the relief again wears on

only with print. A thing from the release

of verities, altered, if not provided where kept.




Considerations well into water


The parts came to know one another

as best they could. To number themselves

as one would rate the importance

of items if forced to chose. None to be settled on

as coming last, this would come later,

when surprised that others were noticing

how each began to give priority over the other,

each listening to how one follows the other, unaware

that there were those who began to bet on

which would pass the other, until one stood at the end,

and so on, in the shadow of the front.



Jordan Stempleman's poetry has previously appeared in magazines such as New American Writing, Moria, MiPoesias, Milk Magazine, Shampoo, Softblow, and Word for/Word.

His first book, Their Fields is now available through Moria e-books.
 
 
 
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