J o r d a n S t e m p l e m a n —

So Lifelike

I live to hand you a towel, 
clumsy the time unpacking
itself, and look over there! 
Something as simple as that. 

And one day, when I return
to you in a sopping black
locomotive that only you
recognize as more rumored

than corny, our sense of 
general direction, what we’ve
given our all, will find its
end, buzzing from all the 

hoopla that looking back 
stores up in its bones. 

Streamed

And we listened, not as we’re speaking now, but with pause

drained with stops between states 

that a moment before felt enormous and fixed—you and there—

a sudden cloud unthrown with nothing resembling even a lost sky, 

a scattering because not ours.

The part I said I would remember most, I didn’t,

so you know thinking weathers on and goes so long 

inside these bursts that show so fine.

And so the struggle wasn’t there, the scrubbed memory

unimportant, less important, or abounding as the left behind, the thereafter, 

lungs dropped always in the advertisements 

we’re built up to believe.

Longstanding Relationships

We bonded and prices surged. 
From space, we located where
the huts first appeared, sculptures
before they became monuments. 
It is place that graces the invaded
before the outright roar. 
But I was once a mechanic for
American Airlines, you mentioned
at our exit interview, while I
became too shy to speak, a light
forgotten, left on in the living
room for over a month straight. 
When we’re brought back to life
again will this also be considered
an establishment, while our real
stories go on, told as marginalia?
When I look up, the world is in
such a fantastic mood for once. 
As your translator, I’ll be involved
as much as I can w/o being there.  

.