The future
has no money

but it does have
our ideas

about where the money
should go.

Try flipping off the light
right after falling

asleep in that chair.
Do you feel less

cramped
or like your tongue

has swollen
around your little

sudden heart?
What would you pay

to stay in the dark
to say

to that heart
pay anything

when you’re told
cough up

the cash for feeling
this remarkably

still
still enough

to be picked up
or put down?

***

Jordan Stempleman is the author of eight collections of poetry including Wallop and No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press). He is an editor for The Continental Review and Windfall Room, serves as the faculty editor for Sprung Formal, and runs A Common Sense Reading Series.