Midrange Road Kill
 
The skull can call winter a naked eye, sightless and shot.
What I ate, I caught with the moon lost to the woods.
The white bones of wolves can kill, by eating the advice of a bird.

Fresh Southern Air
 
I stood outside thinking about breakfast and the guilt of gluttony,
beloved but relentless like a couple of drinks that trickle and gulp,
though I haven’t become a bird or nothing so much as myself.

Ignoring Columbus
 
The observed peculiarities of an albatross are only figured out through ritual.
I could walk home and build a shrine to the distant forest.
I could walk blessed to hear a howling like a fire, eager to stop in response.

Monica Rico grew up in Saginaw, Michigan alongside General Motors and the legend of Theodore Roethke. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and the author of Twisted Mouth of the Tulip (Red Paint Hill Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in SiDEKiCK Lit, Dunes Review, The Ilanot Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Luna Luna, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. Follow her at www.slowdownandeat.com.