NEVER FELT SPRING
without your touch i’d have no skin i’m certain
of nothing in this world
without steady drum beats ushered by your fingers snapping tapping against your solid thighs
calves/young oaks anchoring you to green ground
your hair is a cloud of slept on cornsilk
a summer storm suspended from the heat of lying low
prickling humidity and perspiration smelling of mint-pear
memories from quiet hours
you felt open as daytime and a broken window
i don’t think i said anything but i watched your wounds and your ease healing and that was enough
that and the stroll
you took me through spring on bluster and whole rooms breathing heavy
streets on lockdown, sprints downhill
i never quite caught up to you but i think i was moving too fast
Mykki Rios
Mykki Rios is a queer genderfluid Mexican-American poet, performer and interdisciplinary artist hailing from Chicago. They have been published in Apparition Literature, Synkroniciti Magazine, and The Normal School, amongst many others. They enjoy constantly searching for new music, visual novels, French pastries, napping with their dog, and getting glitter absolutely everywhere while doing makeup. You can find them on the dance floor.
Why these poems knocked Martheaus out:
I was all in by the time I got to that first line break ("without your touch i’d have no skin i’m certain / of nothing in this world"). Okay, excuse the ensuing nerd-out, but I love these first two lines, and that line break is tremendously placed. The poem is involved with duality and nuance so it's fitting to start with lines that can be read in two different ways ("i'm certain" applying to both “without your touch i’d. . .” and “of nothing”). And, to put it even more simply, it's hard to make a line break that interesting (well, at least it's pretty damn cool to me). And the entire poem leans into breaks and phrasal play. This is what I think we literature nerds mean when they say texture; the poem's form and voice give off an airiness, ease, and (for me) the break away from conventional punctuation was one more element of the poem being bare with us (in that, let's drop all the unnecessary marks).
"You felt open as daytime and a broken window." Wheww, now that’s a damn line! This poem really selects its imagery and metaphorical moments so deftly. This window works as a play with seeing through one another, seeing the cracks so clearly, and also it comes at a time when the poem is transitioning to the stroll (see how subtly the daytime and window move us to that final chase).
Okay, I've got to stop myself at some point so I'll end with one with one more. The poem handles complexity well. We're in a lockdown, and yet we're chasing someone, and yet we can't catch up to them, and yet maybe we were going too fast to begin with. We're in love and yet we're speaking in the past tense.
Interview:
I'm still picking up the pieces of my shattered jaw looking at the form, line breaks, and syntactical play. What were some of the motivations for writing the poem this way?
I wrote this poem while in college (don't ask how long ago), and I wanted there to be an effusive energy that mirrors the feelings of being in new love. I tried to magnify the real details of my experience at the time to share some of that hyper-reality of caring so much everything sensory is saturated, maximal. I wanted it to feel like there was the momentum of running excitedly everywhere you go. I really did live on a neighborhood situated on a hill, and it did have a broken window in my bedroom as the weather warmed up. It was like you could feel the space around me breathing heavily. I also have to credit my schoolmates, who encouraged me to start playing with slashes as part of my line breaks, which has gone on to become one of my stylistic signatures. It allows me the freedom to run on and create multiple readings of lines.
I'm noticing so much play with sensory moments (heat, humidity, perspiration, drum beats, fingers tapping). Could you explain what details like this do for the atmosphere and relationship?
I mentioned in my last answer that we lived in an apartment with a broken window, and that the poem is set in the start of the warm weather months. We lived in an old building with minimal temperature control, but still would troop into my (and my friend Joyce's) room to hang out. I can still recall the humidity hanging in the room. The love interest this poem is about was a drummer studying music at the time, and in that way we are all so aware of the person we fancy, I noticed everything about him. His hair getting messy from the heat, the way he'd play along to music with no instruments. I truly wanted to use sensory play to make the reader feel giddy, but also an intense passion, all of which aligns with falling for someone in my mind.
If you could have anyone in history read this poem and love it, who would it be and why? It could be anyone from Emily Dickinson to Steve from Blue's Clues.
Edna St Vincent Millay. I've always really loved her as a poet, but also a person. She has a quote I come back to often: "You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It's only that." To me, that statement is both pithy, but also rather vulnerable. With that in mind, I think she'd absolutely be taken with the work I've presented here.