PLENTY

sometimes i gaze out west at the Rockies
i imagine myself going up in the mountains
learning to forage
going out and finding flowers to brew into mead
mushrooms jutting from bark and peeking from under wet leaves
there would be alliums growing just out of sight from the roads
somewhere there would be an abandoned temple finding new life
as an orchard one quarter of the year and a gravesite the other three
i would have a pet pig that i nursed with a bottle
sometimes i would trade with farmers
over talk about the changes that rolled across the land and sky
they would remark that i really didn’t seem the sort for mountains
cause i’m not
but i bet i could learn
the way you build up callouses
for a life where somewhere i go is behind a waterfall
for a life where the fir trees find the fog layer and the snow-melt
where i never think about how i look to other eyes as i sip a cocktail
i could go i could toughen
i could learn

PYRE

i dreamed a poem about sage where the house burnt down cleansing itself and i was the house reduced to a glyph of cinders the fire was incidental to the heat the remaining char the only testament to a rite performed in crackling solitude i wonder if i asked would you watch my incendiary rebirth like the cycle of an ever dying sun this goes amongst forests of unheard questions that never dance past my birch lips sealed with sap my observations from knotted eyes tell from your sway that your body contains music the opalescent drum of the moon bangs on over the collapsed towers of my body while my mind is blinking open as a sprout thriving in the ashen nutrients of who i have been up until now and how pluck me from the ground i beg though i think i might die anew if you were to pick me

Mykki Rios is a queer genderfluid Mexican-American poet, performer, and multimedia artist. Raised in Chicago, and having lived many places across the globe, they currently reside in Boulder, Colorado. Mykki has had works featured in issues of Welter, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, Random Sample Review, Smoke and Mold Journal, Synkroniciti Magazine, The Coachella Review, The Normal School, and more. They were also a finalist in Lupercalia Press’ 2022 Chapbook Series Contest.