Kylan Rice


Illuminated manuscript


     Snow and sugar peas and beans Pythagoras
refused to eat are painted in a book
            of hours     in the book of wealth
     an hour is     its gold rosettes and trellises
of text where textuality is just
            the movement of a slow brass weight
     inside a longcase clock     Each second is a line     an arc
that writes itself then doubles back
and tries again to tell it
     straight    
this time     The eye
looks up or stops
     exceeds the line the same way spiral
tendrils of the bean escape the text and twine
themselves like annotations in the margin
     of the page in search
of sun in helices
            in vines of adenine and cytosine     
     that blossom into organelles and tender glands     I sweat
 
while reading on the Goose Creek bridge
            without a shirt in sunlight at the center
     of the year     the year a labyrinth     a metal coil
or choker in a clock
             that loosens as the pawl and ratchet
     slips in quanta     all at once
and discontinuous     each second
            like a dislocated bone     a popping out of place
     that crunches
with the freshness
            of a sugar snap inside the mouth     my body
     losing shape and morphing in the pupal shell 
the poem is   
            each poem that I write
     concluding with submission to the day     its exigence
imperative as halter rope and throatlatch
             bit rings cool against my cheeks     the soul
     an anima
or animal
            for Caesar’s I am    

     I am
the diamond-chokered deer     the deer
            that broke six feet from me in Shenandoah
     crashing uphill through the underbrush
with sapling-snapping weight     surprising me
as much because I hadn’t seen it there
     as from its lack of grace
as graceless as I am each time I try
            to break from you     ambivalent     the quantum
     bit inside my mouth a particle
that is and isn’t there until it’s measured
and collapses crippled
     into place like stress
each second
syllable     I sing myself in place
     then out of it again
as dual as the year is in its waxing and its waning phase
            and split today between the two
     at summer’s fullest cusp, a hesitant Pythagoras     

who was slain where he stood on the verge of a bean-field
            unwilling to cross it
     as he fled from his pursuer     a would-be student
the bean a sacred emblem
            of the resurrection
     because it coils toward the sun     its path
not straight
            although the source it seeks is clear     so bright
     it blinds the eye that doesn’t
look away
            avert
     contort itself
as cramped as shorthand
             in the margin of the page     this note
     to self or little spine of words I grow     a scholiast
with scoliosis
            as I hunch above the book
     the hour is and note
the dragonflies and joe pye weed
            the poison hemlock at the meadow’s edge
     as I read “area” has roots in urea 
the letter u
             a summer sign     the solstice vast and open as u
     r my
ur is
            how it sounds
     when I say
dear with
            iron in my mouth     against my tongue

     the reins inside your hand

Internal rime


     A leaf presents to sun a surface   area that rots  
in time   becomes a lace
     like ice in shallows at the water’s edge   a flow-
corroded filigree the mind can see
     although it’s late
July along the strand I walk repeating to myself
     the word carotid liking how
the sound of it creates a clot
     inside the mouth and summons up the image of a neck vein
full of river-holes   a riddled flute the blood
     has eaten out these years of rhyming
beat with beat
     until it also starts to fray   the tune   the man
unmanned
     by inner monologue   the mutter-to-myself of jugular
and other vessel
     -forms the jug   jug    sound of nightingales
in poems
     stitched   from quotes   and axioms untrue
until they’re proven on the pulse   until
     the reader’s blood gets filtered through
the text   a mesh or Flemish
     Mechlin made of ice the page   a tracery that body
-heat destroys and wrecking
     wets the hand   not knowing
where it’s from
     what wound   I cannot feel   the fact I’m
vascular
     all ganglion   and thaw   or thew a sinew that a looser
tongue pronounces
     thou   the
slackening of me thou   art a spasm in the night    
     -jar filled
with ash the word
     becomes inside the mouth repeating it   to try and make it true

Also by Kylan Rice: "35°45'53.5"N 79°12'01.8"W"

Kylan Rice is the author of An Image Not a Book (Free Verse Editions, 2023), a collection of poems, and Incryptions (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), a collection of essays. With Dan Beachy-Quick, he co-authored Primer (Free Poetry, 2023), a collection of conversations about poetics. His creative writing has appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Image, Kenyon Review Online, Seneca Review, West Branch, and other journals. He is the associate editor of the Missouri Review and co-editor of Thirdhand Books.

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