The Travels by Jordan Stempleman

The Travels
Jordan Stempleman
60 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9804541-5-4
Otoliths 2008
$10.00 + p&h


A rewriting of The Voyages & Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight

A book taken and returned and taken again
from Sir John Mandeville; of darkened artifacts
and incipient wonders; and of the sadness left
from passing through actual and imaginative sights




from The Travels

4

Of Saint John the Evangelist; and of Hippocrates’ daughter,turned into the shape of a dragon


If it was really told
what Hippocrates’s daughter most resembled
we would kiss without variability the arrangement
of her skin’s latest draft

the one face again smoothed
from the choked flaps of scales

that as a gift
plans the undersides
of our impossible surface

6

Of several names of the Sultans; of their estate;
and of the Tower of Babylon


get rid of your thinking and in return
you will stay here forever

there will no longer be the tired size
from the stories again

the too various to include
where you are now

where much will never speak of
you again