5 Poems by Kylan Rice
TUNNEL 13, SISKIYOU SUMMIT
There
is almost an impression of weightlessness, as if, maybe
the
slope of the pass above the tunnel never bore it any mind.
But
this is just a memory, snow to my thigh at the entrance.
My
brother and I walk its mile. Midway through, where
it
would be most costly to find the line is open still, bursting
the
torsos of ice pendant at both mouths, there is a moment
I
forget if I am walking out or in, leaving or returning,
having
woken to discover a desire I so long thought I had
no
longer there. What was it for? What was shipped and what
received
through this structure made of beams, or what must
be,
above me in the dark? Having woken, years later, and miles
away,
in my brother’s house, living there between jobs while
he
travels through the summer with his wife. What is it I hoped
to
find? That midpoint down the line, where to turn back is
to
risk as much? A threshold of no difference that I keep
crossing,
as if to leave. Or was it, this time, maybe, to return,
if
not for this feeling and this mile, as if nothing had happened?
Where
there wasn’t before, now there is only what seems like
lightness.
With as little light at both ends, the risk only seems
to
disappear. It is still there, but I have given myself up to it.
WEDDING GUESTS
Leaving
what was left
of
the wedding, we wandered
toward
the state capitol, one wing scaffolded and swollen with plastic.
Spoke
little. Took photos with our phones instead.
Of
mills and empty lots. A copy
of
the liberty bell. Nothing is so easy
to
make as an image. This one of you beside a fence
made
of three kinds of wire. Or the scrap yard shed
with
scripture painted yellow on its corrugated siding.
It
is harder, now, to remember their vows, folded
into
paper squares
in
the pockets of their jeans. For this,
I
blame the land, beaten flat. The fear the horizon
inspires,
that there may be nothing
for
me here, or, worse, the reverse, it’s me
who
can’t be loved. The corresponding feeling
I
have to make the most of it, there is only this small window
before
we drive back south through tin ripples
of
hills in a spring storm, and those gaps in the rain, crossing the shadow
of
an overpass, will feel like losing
track
for second, rein of consciousness
slipping
from my grip into sleep, only
to
yank myself back up again, stare from the window
for
something to see. That is how it will feel. Freight train.
Frack
site. Goose Creek. Snow fence.
FAITH ROCK
A
red horse and rider
leaped
from this bluestone outcrop, Faith
Rock,
into the river from a height of fifty feet
over
two hundred years ago. Heading upstream
along
the bank, I look back
to
see you sitting with your sister on the concrete spillway
of
the ruined dam. Waders in the day’s
shallows.
What she feels
less
heartbreak,
than
a sense of insecurity, river ice
forming
in planchettes around the pylons of the footbridge.
The
story is complex:
the
mare’s owner an agent of guerrilla war,
her
rider from Faith Rock into the Deep River a salt merchant
who
stole the horse while fleeing capture.
Bay
Doe so desired
the
owner came from hiding twice for her,
captor
risking capture,
once
holding hostage the merchant’s wife.
There
are two sisters in the sunlight behind me,
one
of whom is certain
she
will never be the same. In their periphery,
I
try to memorize the vector
of
a stolen horse. I try to break into a still-standing
mill
building. See, through its broken windows,
the
spooled racks
of
some abandoned spinner frames. I can know
what
happened here. It is only later
I
learn what you spoke about together
without
me. What it would feel like to walk as far as possible
across
the river on this wall. What would happen if
one
of us fell in. The growing sense
that
anything could happen. The rubble in the shallows
warm
and speckled to the touch. Bullets
sunk
into the silt,
if
not by now dissolved,
where
he fired pistols in bewildered pursuit.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
after
Rilke’s first Sonnet to Orpheus
Once
settled—where
your
loveseat goes, where the box-springs, blue binders
filled
with pedigrees, handed down in the event I need to know
my
blood line’s length—our own
subsequent
settling: sunkenness
in
sunlit silt. Days
of
soft pushing aside. Only then you start to see
the
tilt. How October
turns
the north woods pink. Soon all light
feels
like it has its end built in, landing
irrevocably
here, along the curvature
of
jaw, of path and stoop. It’s not what’s there
but
how you know it’s there that scares you: lengths and depths
that
shallow every morning
while
you dry-heave on the tiles in the shower.
That
I am here, I know, makes it as much
better
as worse: as good
as
if I wasn’t at all. As if, when you look up, toward the doorframe,
what
you’re seeing is less me than what falls
across
me, throwing behind me in the hall
the
breach that I am. The stopped-short angling-out
of
the light that I pose. The extent
I
am here. The limit, or edge
of
the room, of the will. But to what extent
I
am, I’m here to say I know it feels like nothing
will
ever be the same. This the most I can do: listen, repeat,
until
it sounds like song, I know,
I’m here, while holding you, temple to temple,
lintel of trembling
timber, this echo that quiet, that temple
in your inner ear.
POEM
Deep
freeze, mid-spring. No one plans
for
its receding. Making do, neighbors haul blue
tarps
across their herbs and greens, hope
they’ve
done enough. I place a basin of water on the porch, as if
for
an animal. In the morning,
I
lift the pure slant I’ve made from the rim and let it redden
my
hands. Through it, day sluices forward and back,
a
dream held up to melt. The light is given
a
new pane to fall through. I know there could be nothing
easier
than to let this also fall
and
break, but through what window then
could
a trapped bird fly? It beats its fever
in
every corner of the ceiling. All my doors thrown open
and
still it thinks it can’t escape. I begin to feel it, too,
the
fear that this might be
what’s
left of the world,
the
feeling of my palm as it throbs
against
a vanishing surface. Knowing there is no way
I
will not lose my grip on this. This interval
a
mansion-full of russet-breasted birds might burst through,
a
port in air, the air now deafening
with
song, promising tomorrow
the
freeze will break and be forgotten, as good as if
it
never happened, and I will find
my
basin empty, drunk by something while I slept
my
human sleep.
*****
Kylan Rice has an MFA from Colorado State University, and he is working on his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His book reviews have been published by Colorado Review, West Branch, Carolina Quarterly and the Emily Dickinson Society Bulletin. Some of his poems can be found at Kenyon Review, The Seattle Review, and elsewhere.
