What's the Matter

Jordan Stempleman: What's the Matter
112 pages $10.00
webpage http://www.lulu.com/content/629216 or click on posts title.

"Maximizing the tension of line breaks, making the most of each word'snuances, Jordan Stempleman creates a stunning landscape of precision anddelicacy. There are gorgeous moments here, and they always "begin with theactual condition"-this book constitutes a commitment to the beauty of theworld, and a new instance of it."

- Cole Swensen

"In this impressive, replete collection, Jordan Stempleman takes usrepeatedly to this place of contemplation, where only a few rare words arenecessary. We are invited to a course of thinking that locates intensitywithout demanding it-for therein lies the fabled difference between anexploratory and settled poetics, to open out and out again upon presenthistory. This is, quite simply, a wonderful book."

- Paul Hoover

Ben Lerner

More local events, Ben will be reading Friday Feb. 23rd, 7pm, Vanderslice
Reception Room, at the Art Institute.

I'll be attending Lerner's master class the following
Saturday. Will post the results.


















Mad Lib Elegy


There are starving children left on your plate.
There are injuries without brains.
Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day
removing tiny seeds from mixtures
they cannot afford to smoke
and cannot afford not to smoke.
Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts
of hair removal and therefore resent
our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas.
Imprisonment increases life expectancy.
Finish your children. Adopt an injury.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back,
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of_______]


70% of pound animals will be euthanized.
94% of pound animals would be euthanized
if given the choice. The mind may be trained
to relieve itself on paper. A pill
for your safety, a pill for her pleasure.
Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter
but not by loud weeping.
Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games
are all the rage among lifers.
The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry.
The capitol is redolent of burnt monk.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]


There are two kinds of people in the world:
those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities,
‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those
that respond to their majesty emotionally.
70% of the planet is covered in parking lots.
94% of a man's body is parking lot.
Particles of parking lot have been discovered
in the permanent shadows of the moon.
There is terror in sublimity.
If Americans experience sublimity
the terrorists have won.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]

I Am Shy a Hole

I hate it when it gets all languaged around like this. I don’t want it to be “If I had a dog” or “If I don’t have a dog.” What concerns me is how to get past the point where I can decide whether I want to do anything next.
In other words, this is always going to be about my mine, not yours.
Last night he told me we could narrow it down to a boy-girl thing, and I let him disrobe me. I had to think about the knees of the girl I sat across from last year in school.
This much is figured out: the thing about being a girl is that stuff is stuck inside you—but with a boy, stuff goes away and never comes back. A boy keeps loosing himself. A boy just keeps watching himself run out. How much should this explain?
That boy is open wide at one end so things can make their way out? (Say it and you will never hear it stop until you make believe there is something else your voice could be for.)
Girl is shut tight: say it and it’s already done away with.
None of this is in my face.
I am always saying boy, no matter what people think you hear.

Gary Lutz

wanted to pass along the following info about a really excellent reading that is taking place this sunday on the KU campus. Deb Olin Unferth is a terrific and really interesting writer who teaches at KU, and gary lutz is a visiting professor there this semester.

When: Sunday February 25, 2007

Where: Jayhawk room Kansas Union, Lawrence Kansas

Time: 5:00PM

Scott Malin

for further Sketches Paintings and Comics click here