X-Rays and Other Landscapes by Kyle McCord

In Kyle McCord's X-Rays and Other Landscapes, the poems trangulate the relationship of a father and son through art, negotiating vulnerabilities through slippery syntax and McCord's gift for leaping. Whether it's famous paintings or stone lions the father wants to purchase, the poems find their intimate connection through historical portraits and the ephemera of everyday life. The eponymous brain scan also becomes the ciaroscuro portrait that both the father and speaker consider, constantly looking for "metaphor for the shadow." Here, McCord asks us to look and look again at how the mind is an elusive and metapmorphosing thing, even as you hold the image of it in your hands -- Traci Brimhall, author of Saudade.