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PHENOBARBITAL by Kylan Rice

for seizures


At the party I am in charge
of the sapphic blackouts: everyone has
a cryptic time. Everyone celebrates their
soft forgetful parts. O WebMD,
what is happening? What's a rave?
What is this blood behind the turgid eyelid?
I have tattooed the night's New Year's
countdown on my penis, everything
a mouth or a claw hammer. Then
some flowers. Then a haunting kiss.
There are so many sluts here; what
compels me to seek them out in closets & weep
on their bodies? My skin is in the snow.
The snow is in the payphone.
I leave it wondering: will I ever be back.
On the way home, there is a booming in my hand;
it is a stranger's Blackberry. I am afraid to answer for fear
of falling in love with someone asking for Ashley.
Between the living & the living there is a shutting door.
There is someone who feels like singing but doesn't.
I can see fireworks from everywhere:
I grieve in the smoky finales, no single light
having not left me for good.

Kylan Rice has had poetry published in Birdfeast, ILK Journal, Parcel, Thrush and elsewhere. He is editor for Likewise Folio and Inscape: A Journal of Literature and Art. He lives in Utah.