ANTI-HORIZON : CAMERA CALIBRATION

I imagine parallel
lines, lonely
in their eternity

looking for a light to
quiet for

due to the small
points

but die again,
quickening

a turning in
succession births
a ring

I don't know the just
where of any

aspens of the
et cetera

of intersection

mountain benefits
include late style,
see deferred
peonies, see

a checkerboard the
chosen form
because invariant

to perspective and
lens distortion

shun stun
stun shun

every baby tooth
carrying on in the
world somewhere

my mother, already
dead, cannot help

to quake—first of the
earth, then of the
"person, animal, limb,
etc"

a checkerboard
chosen because
various

the squared remainder: elation
election
execution

*note from production: to view this poem as formally intended by the poet, please view from a desktop version.

Kelly Hoffer is a poet and book artist. Her debut collection of poetry, UNDERSHORE (2023), was selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen as the winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize. Her manuscript "Fire Series" was a finalist for the 2021 National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sixth Finch, TAGVVERK, American Chordata, Denver Quarterly, and Prelude, among others. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry. Learn more at https://www.kellyrosehoffer.com/.