from KLONOPIN

I was young. I found myself being affectionate. After a while, the curtains seemed to stop moving and several moths dropped dead to the floor underneath. I swept them up. I tended to the blood. My duty and my desire overlapped.

The story of my experiences, night after night. A Honda Civic filled with ice cubes. The next day, there was a piece of black cloth instead of a door. My room appeared to be untouched, despite the cruel laughter.

Being a teenager was like learning a knife-trick. I believed that it was possible for people to die of sadness or loneliness. I dreamed about sex. It was like dreaming about gold translucent orbs, but from a strange angle.

It hurt to laugh, but I had to. I spoke of you several times today. I looked up, but the ceiling was only a rectangular portion of the black house.

*

I keep trying to stay awake for you. Elsewhere in the bedroom there is a rotting noise turning into a memento. To curl up is to concatenate or antagonize a spinal cord. To breathe in deeply is to become hypersensitive to serration and other types of redundancy . . .

Where anchors are concerned you just kind of have to let it happen . . . A broken kitchen table. A scarf can be just as intense, a plastic bag can be a collection of sore spots.

Playfulness is searching for love and fear at the same time . . . Later on, I realize that most of history’s famous pornos have been total coincidences! The same has been true of most assassinations. Styrofoam occludes my mother’s face in a dream / a dream sequence.

A memory in which everybody looks away at the same time, allowing me to become aware of my own defense mechanisms. I take a deep breath though once again it is as if I am opening the door of a Lamborghini.

*

An apex could be anything. After learning about the survival rate it was hard to believe I was even in the USA. There was a soft laugh compounded by outstretched approaching arms. Using a car was sometimes the only option. For instance in some movies the main character had to drive down a narrow flight of city stairs. Pursuit can be the expression of destiny over time.

A hydroplane is a symbol of indifference. I was drifting off but then realized I had drifted entirely too far. For instance this could be either hand soap or semen.

There is a person inside the charioteer. A charioteer racing on the rim of a burned-out crater . . . Keep in mind a crater is the opposite of being “homeward bound.” For instance, family photos in which there is a profusion of minor chords.

Certain things are forbidden even in my own dream. Reflexology is a voice in the dark mispronouncing my name and, what’s more, steadily floating away . . .

Kylan Rice is co-editor and co-founder of likewise folio, an online poetry journal where he also hosts the interview podcast likewise audio and edits the chapbook press likewise books. Kylan has poetry published or forthcoming in Ghost Proposal, BROWN GOD, Similar:Peaks::, death hums, Bodega, Birdfeast, ILK Journal, Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. He is an MFA candidate at Colorado State University.