Jen Hofer

If I had troops in my hometown walking through my house, I’d probably
pick up a gun and shoot them also.

— U.S. Soldier, Iraq

limitless sensuous apparition…our vain attempts to steer a clear path…we strain
against our confines.

— David Maisel

to thwart truism — to understand —

we have been given and take

(we take)

the land let be expands is taken

kinetic relapse

a brink and a brink so as to see

(alone) slowly very slowly does not stop very

sound appears prior in trembling shadow

unworldly very being of the world sewn

reinvented wheeling clock-chopped air against

air grinding in sixes through sights the land

a grid a language imposition the people run

shuttered still the ones who got caught

the orders are typed out lemony soft between the fingers

we agree to agree dots collecting to form letters in accord coded

unsoftly thumbs up spooling out acquiescence untextured dry

smooth seeming soft spiked pocked like land cratered topography

redrawn from above spun backwards the orbit unspools thumbs

up sporing out of control directed to it go to it tipped toward

tipped to a point sharpened through effort made to fit thinned in twists

of sameness thinner threads solidly twinned run through with color shot

no sun at all in other words elsewhere wide open unnoticed in other words

recalcitrant grounded rammed into

a decision we did not make deciduous ramifications

taken lightly yet taken we were absolved preemptively

glinting cymbals flattened heads is not infinite yet worlds beyond

collision in light’s lack unprompted responding to orders

compounded by want wanting in

we wear suits, shadows, acronyms, ideas, honky-tonk refrains, arroyos, dance moves, business cards, shock tactics, logos. we wear pins, needles, studs, stays, soft bones, modules, electrodes, chain link, weather patterns, wives, backtalk. we sift with choice. we wear money like an unread book, like an unborn child, like a glass half broken, like a body half broken, like a standard, like a stand. we color in the lines. we say we will abide. we abide. we break. we wear plastic, promise, debt, regulation, temptation, preemption, tread, silk, nothing. molecules is as molecules do. we right. no good and not good. rght, we brink and relapse very. and again. we ask, squeeze, preen, corner, obey, erase, junk, lift, memorialize. we wear and down we go.

who got caught catch shut

in a sort of stillness unabated in truth

not changing decomposition unchanged so in truth false

docks rammed into the land prior lake beds dragonfly wingless

up caught beached with no war plan our lawns impeccable immobile

placid lakes of investment we shed yet our bodies mapped dry

faultless not new reinvented as a resource of last resort on timeshare

horizonless sky manicured unbeholden close to the chest shed

unabridged but who’s counting splayed flagged with a trace

disappeared but who’s counting

the horizon disappeared and so we began to sing

in excess of the allotted speed limit

we think transparently and utterly opaque

in population’s rub erosion blooms

say it isn’t so or say it isn’t so

erasure builds request under someone else’s sky

occupied placed in position

prison

orbiting an axis

made with

someone else in mind

defamiliarized zone mindless bidding you to do it

orbiting a point to enter lightly as light

violent broken into transformation is a sort of formation

cannot be light very given

an everyday street corner tanked over torn up

apart from everyone who cares