j o r d a n    s t e m p l e m a n

Song 14

Song 9

Song 14

With you I am a scared whelp and night is night again. In my beard

there's a smell of an old forgotten cooler, once used for fishing, once

used for sandwiches, that makes me unable to sleep. The fire I read

about in 1932 is in a place of concrete and cloverleaf now. Last night

I thought I was going to get fucked all over the place. Tonight I pick

my nose for the forth time in 10 minutes and think how lucky I was

to ever like, even for a year, something like drum & bass. The way

you come out of this thing, this real thing that's happening now, is to

find the head and hit that head over and over until it doesn't belong

to anybody. Not to pie or poison or infection. Not to my lord or my

woman or the strength to build these or anything like them again.

Cores more than anything dumfound me. I swear when I stare, I

stare out.

next

Song 9

I wake up and masturbate.
The sun also rises and I masturbate
to the kind of love that will endure
the clarissa heath ruby jacinth—
ghost planets of another person's
dreams, the frozen where color is taking place.
TO BREATHE WITHOUT PARDON
AS DARKNESS SEEDS DARKNESS.
I slap myself and think only of the sun.
Above my belt, I slap and shake my stomach.
I grab my stomach and look down
at the flowers from my window.
Tomorrow they will move.
Tomorrow they will move.
Tomorrow the water's edge will be theirs
and touching is the further looking in
for the great intensities that dream.

next

JORDAN STEMPLEMAN's most recent collections include Wallop and No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press). He edits The Continental Review, runs the Common Sense Reading Series, and teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.

in issue ten

a l i c e   b l u e   t w e n t y - s e v e n

I S S N     1 5 5 9 - 6 5 6 7