Jordan STEMPLEMAN









May Mean
 
There is that driving again. Every day, sitting
in something not made for you, entirely suited
to a larger body, a belief to be taken along
with songs from this time or another time,
and nothing else. Well, there’s also the awful
attentiveness. The planted and unmoving
parts from us, swimming beside before falling
behind, that add to the panic, the childish
and unrational wind, unclear and lumbering
on the outside, the speech of places left behind.
 
 








 
Primers
 
and after these years, once their speaking is made
complete, not for them it’s said, but alongside a life,
they will begin to tell of what went into them,
what amounted to, time apart and the well formed
tour, nights and walks for lunch, counted as one,
the first evening at home, when home meant not leaving
or wanting to leave, totaled as two, those arrived at
days, recalled exactly as they were, and so, extended,
no longer to go on as what was left of them, but to settle
without sift, to consider each moment that coursed as able, as
so good at what they do that, when they spoke up and announced,
this is how we are to end, it began, and what once stood
as surroundings, moved behind these times to form
the unheard of hours, waiting to open without falling
forward, vacant and unlike any other time before
 








 
For Rest
 
 
There is a
doubt for all
the rest. There
 
is a kind
of time that
lifts time without
 
risk of hanging
on. Nothing to
dig, no sight
 
pushed along or
wound too tight.
This marks the
 
notion to stay,
to delay leaving,
there to remain
 
still enough, hoping
to sense one
side of the
 
face or another.
There is a
dream that stands
 
for light and
that often calls
out for what
 
is left. It’s
there, sight goes
frantic when approached
 
by what’s now
bent, what once
swayed for those
 
chance locations and
distances. It’s here
what’s looked at
appears certain that
if there were
an occasion to
 
remain still, things
could actually appear
to move, could
 
eventually be the
unknown, the thoughtful
and unthinkable concern.
 










 
Always
 
Today the weather dropped, and tomorrow
there’ll be this and that, and it’ll be all around us, well deserved
to go after this day, as all is from following.
Either way, pretend you’ll think of me, return
with new words having nothing to do with us, with wonder
or living, just those thoughts, bothersome if not overtaken,
inside to say I heard you, unbecoming what you had in mind.
 
 








Ways Fill
 
the sort of problem
aimed, set against
 
the last of it,
in its own
 
mixture, the closest
brush against what
won’t remove the
 
building or the making
up, hung, carrying
 
the crawl of
having thought whatever
 
could, and you,
having done it
 
before, knows how it leans
for light, lined
immediately, the clearing
 
that is, with never
the unease of neither
eager or otherwise about

 


 





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