One Poem
WALK IT OFF
Do you remember when you said
I galloped, the geese finally
crowed hello? The lights went out,
if only as some signal that
the idea is all the rage––a moment
of decision that has already
happened, so what, flung as I am,
there’s nothing lighter than a little
light following us in return.
And when that ends, yes and no,
there we go again, sappy
at the moment when the sun
falls right in front of you for
feigning the romance with anything
but. Forgive the mind that takes
between the first days
and the last, the upright wish
to continuously scribble
in the margins,
and to remember there’s nowhere
to be, plus the spider
in your hair, the names
we put on these in the winters
even when we don’t feel
like it. What’s protecting the
community is all over the news
if you just look for it,
out there, growing at our expanse.
Time picks a cluster, doesn’t it,
before wandering off
again, flicked out of range,
no longer a charming hush
that waits out tomorrow.
And while you’re all here,
spread out
in the clarity of the next thing
before we know it, let’s agree
this togetherness
is really something,
unlike anything
we’ll experience in the daylight
ever again.
It even includes my ex-
brother-in-law
who, I don’t know,
I see as someone who now walks
everywhere. A gollum
numbed in a hoodie,
the bodies he’s re-
worked all around this town.
I follow my grandmother
endlessly and not enough, but
brothers are like humps
of graying snow melt outside
the Investment Center,
where who needs a chainsaw
when the day now means
forever, where creation
is so un-
assisted in its need for perfection.
Otherwise, as indifferent
as a weather report
for some city,
far away from your home.
&
This morning, 3am, rot stomach,
a burnt gut wake up,
but just before in a dream,
a childhood friend
became strangely
affectionate—some sign
he’ll die soon?
Getting out of bed
to read headlines of doom
in the other room, nauseated,
please no vomiting
before class
or long walk
in the rain.
This spare bedroom that feels
still foreign, a space
I wake in
and forget where I am,
I, who never go into strangers’
apartments these days.
But there were years,
almost every weekend,
that I’d end up in some not me
decorated place—this person
knows that person, and so
we’d end up in a surprisingly
elegant living room or a dump
with the scent of sweet
ripe leftovers
from months ago.
I wonder how these echoes
are mine,
how they sound to other people
shared halfway through
a Tuesday morning
of the best slate gray sky,
not just more minimal
flattened surfaces or
this new era
that resembles a drug deal
gone bad.
Tonight, when you come home,
I’ll tell you that the lone pretzel
that survived the last forest fire
is only four hundred dollars.
And when you say,
what about the golden beaver
with the dead-eyed stare,
the one that I’d spend thousands
to save like a little rat
under the weather,
a toothy bird motioning
for more heavy rain? I’ll say,
I’d do anything for you
except just before tax season.
That’s just too much
to ask, you know?
Maybe a flight out west
for no reason, instead.
Maybe see where Cormac McCarthy
did the unspeakable,
but our focus, of course,
on the diners
and mesas, some border
experience, some broader take
we inch closer
by calling our own.
The weeks go by,
and thankfully we stay put,
eat bucatini
and anchovy lemon salad,
sending our mothers
these recipes
so they save
all their money and health
by doing the same.
&
Maybe the more intimate side,
all that work unaware,
is what we’re always after.
Like it’s funny how the one-inch
darkness within some Baltic
ivy freaks me out,
Clive Barker’s Nightbreed,
a maw
of hell and humor,
some kingdom
that I belong to
better than I know:
two pigeons
up all night, making a nest
for a pregnant cat.
Such are the miracles, the milestones,
of being together
and then not.
So, as my friend, speak
slower and less often
than just about anyone else.
Be what’s in the room
when there’s nothing
attached
but the weight of wondering,
the patterns of natural gusts
just there.
Sometimes,
this is all it takes
to stay within
the wander,
the blue gone
from the early
evening, ourselves gone
into the flush
of some other interior.
&
If you set me aside
just for a moment
I’ll find a way
to survive
the upcoming evolution
intact.
Or if nothing that massive
maybe just a light
struggle
with myself or
some 24-hour zoo
where the midnight screeching
is its own kind
of forgiveness,
and all the other enclosures
are reserved only
for YOU
& YOU &
YOU & YOU.
But what really kills me
about this place
are the facts:
the neighbors
down the street that serve
saltwater
in the shape of the kitchen
we once called
home
or the aftershave
of slums
where I soaked
into the winding
gravel roads
nitpicking
one eviction
after another, asking,
who started this
more gently
than before, who
protects the flower bed
from all the rage,
the retained
for all the real
estate, some new river
not only a river
asking be become
more of home.
A right of change, renamed,
in this way thinking
shelves
the head.
Let’s not say
I never tried
hard enough. Let’s say
you’ll be home soon,
withholding my unanswered
emails, my Wednesdays
left open not looking
for the hours of Autozone
but tomorrow I’ll behave,
for practice and delight,
for all the flung language
of people, the something
we are made of, the let
wandering that becomes us
as we find ourselves today.
Today, I’m being called
by the similar
and estranged at once.
The afternoon before
I thought about this future
afternoon, was still me, wasn’t it?
As I found it
I was moved.
And if the world begins
and ends
by how we are taken in,
I promise you more gorgons less
sideburns, a love of nothingness
in between.
∩
Jordan Stempleman has published nine collections of poetry, including Cover Songs, Wallop, and No, Not Today. His forthcoming poetry collection, Spilt, won the 2025 Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press. Stempleman is an editor for The Continental Review, Windfall Room, and Sprung Formal. From 2011 to 2025, he curated the A Common Sense Reading Series in Kansas City, Missouri, and is an associate professor in the Liberal Arts Department and Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.