Jeremy Hoevenaar

Your fingertips

imprint the veil
removing paralysis
one object at a time
a dent we seek
to match the color
of this offloading
future—try hoarder—
no more leaning
stacking pushing
under piling on top
of saving for later
DO YOU ENJOY
THE BURDEN OF
AN UNHATCHED PLAN
the sky’s a certain shade
of bargain, the spill
of its space is the light
of its day decrescendoed
into a sweet pink dot
blood’s up to the con-
gregation the spine
is a flight-feathered
gutter writing
the ribs into life

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Generous loving

confident intelligent
powerful coworkers
send you confidence-
building youtube videos,
you perform confident
postures in bathroom
as preamble to scribbling
in notebook / shocked you
have a master’s degree
asks why you don’t
have ten books out
yet panning shot of world
trade center tower
shimmering in immediate
distance a distance
you can run yr fingers
over feel the tingling
thrill of future exploitations
too many to count but just
the right amount of suffering
exists in the world
I arc forward with you
I’m sorry I’ve spent decades
AVOIDING A PLAN
the abandonment
of my inner child
is implied by my salary
dancing here or inert
on the bloodsugar cliffs
does madness still exist
what would be the point

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Trees dropped

the act a long
time ago we
don’t continuously
need to cohere
nothing does
witty and urbane
taking the helm
for the turn’s
sake a flash of
clarity in the sling
of movement
is worth all
the hidden frantic
doubting a gap
in measurement’s
teeth or small
daily history of
valiant surfaces
there in the ripped
pocket whatever
falls out you’ve
found forever
great purpose
comes in the ego
thrusts forward
like a confident
reflection
O beautiful
desert of height
give us your best
cornered stance
take off yr masks
and brandish yr
unmet winnings
adhere to exclamate
freeze response
is best detective
of what’s left
to us of this
winding stew
of truncated war
hormones stalled
CEO posture courses
future poems home
to the shadow body
head cleaves torso’s
hemispheric listening
a human scale of
decorative clarity
meeting a vessel
for st. francis
talks about guerillas’
be killed before
killing’s seeking
to be understood
before the big
blink’s big blink

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lay down these carbs

and hold aloft what vision
i can crumble from
the edifice of shared life
don’t talk at me like I’m in
your past you haven’t met
me yet I’m palming the illusion
of a rat behind my back
for a laugh just one
second’s worth of rupture
per day will part the pages
and attract an allotment
of stutter this joblife’s
a gap between fences
like avenues in affluent
sun call mom call dad
pay yr debts write poems
to yr inner fascicle craving
all day moving between walls
floor to ceiling decomp-
rehension thought needs
an object’s interior speed
editor suffers to float
the edits your platform moves
with you my body a fist
of fear we all know the same
alternative discourse radical
disdain wears big glasses
my naive misreadings of public
temperature confirm a strong
bias toward slipping and slopes

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Road of excess leads

to the road of excess
recent decisions thread
through the ears and
unfurl into the future
updated inventories
pour decisions
battered vehicle or
ornamental face?
Ritual’s environmentally
dependent or contingent
I swing away on a resonance
for every pile there’s
a distinct and correlating
emotion why did I not
study philosophy get those
burst pipes in the head
to speak cleanly and w/out sound
where fingers become
a supplement to ear
the phone famously
weighs in at impossible

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Eye to eye in lanes

of self-centering don’t
stop the music’s filth
layers of slick market-
able body horror
the torso is tangled
beyond use or
recognition throned
absolute in service
secrecy interrupted
calling and collated
in the minor winds
of authority well
it’s always hallways
or corners we bring
the tv to the table
but what are we
really constellating
in our pockets
mispronounced
in the waning gray
of June rain an expansion
of air to ignore
the boundaries intended
to be helpful but these
lines rip like footsteps
through the body
and echo only a solitude
of interior invasion

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

The concrete blinking

in and out of the channel
you might only get one
or two productive cramps
in the back of your hand
the world rushes by
when someone opens
the door and water whispers
ensconced in a small
square the headroom
is the primary selling
point far from the poem
just the initials ranking
the daily fauves you’re
not wrong in tasting
future sediment
a thorough sip of stone
cylindrical gleam museum
at night flustered into
a sleek patrol layers
patrol is what’s for lunch
the awe-ful writing
will admit at least
one spirit inspirit this
pen I’d like to pronounce
or renounce collaged
deity on my shirt
surface remains un-
transformed

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bracing for inexact

impact smash yrself
against the wall until
yr an abstraction don’t
short sell yr interior
decompositional balance
the infinite’s revealed
in a controlled glitch
life as management
of this bubbling up
of fear my ears are in
my knees when you speak
thank you O unseen
wheelies of light
an extension of the common
resigned feeling then sleep
with the tourmaline
in yr mouth quiet
dreams will pool in
yr unplaceable center
and sound their waves out-
with ripples of repair
these relations that dissolve
into water / death seems
an inappropriate solvent
sell of the sour steam
we can rejuvenate our
systems a progressive
universe would show us
the spirits, the interior
pressure is ratcheted up
what do you want to look like
what do you want to do
now you’ve externalized
your long habituation
–enter adult self–