October - Poem 29
Fatale Fungi / Lilly Frank
There exists so much to overwhelm.
Something new sprouting its head
from beneath my feet. I wish I knew
how to grapple with uncertainty
but all I have are these lousy hands.
I can never tell if my fingertips are
outstretching themselves to a meadow
mushroom or a death cap. Though, nearly
every time, I lift the fungi to
my lips and caress its surface.
Tempting it is to be taunted with
a single player Russian roulette.
It makes the overwhelm feel much
smaller.
Haystacks on a Foggy Morning / Anna Ojascastro Guzon
Once they’re infixed
between your cells
the ones responsible
for keeping the glint
in one’s eyes
and warmth
in facial expressions,
they are inoperable,
impossible to tweeze
out. So much
depends on them.
Kingdoms of Heaven and Earth / Kathryn Johnson
Stars thread the sky like Amanita
weaves through life on Earth
We are surrounded on all sides
By light
and blight
By day
and night
Astral and fungal
Our world made whole
Truffle Snuffling / Kimberly McElhatten
for Marguerite
When she visited today, my granddaughter
pointed to the trees beyond the back
window and said,
Those woods are where
Nonna and I hunt for mushrooms.
That’s true. Last month, we
went truffle snuffling out
that back door, like
Tinker Bell in a movie she
loves, and we foraged
for black trumpets
and deer truffles so I could
bring a moment from a kid’s
movie to life in the woods
and plant seeds in a child’s
heart for Mother Nature—
like we did today, when we
rubbed puffs of wood aster
seeds in our palms and then
blew them into the trees
where they will sprout
somewhere, sometime,
but we won’t know
when or where—
just like she’ll eventually tell
black birch from cherry,
goldenrod from ironweed,
blackberries from wineberries,
chanterelles from jacks,
because when she was three
we went truffle snuffling
out the back door and
into the woods
like Tinker Bell.
APORIA / H.T. Reynolds
after “There is No Word” by Tony Hoagland
there wasn’t a word for the breaking
skin held along the razor-thin border
between the rusted steel trim of grandmother’s table
and the alluring thrum of morning’s invitation
there wasn’t a word for the crashing current
meant to be kept in like a secret—like a breath
through a tunnel, dancing body strapped to car seat
yearning for the arrival of the dusty sky’s breaking
along a concrete stomach—dislodging a wish
like an annual candle, sparkling eyes dazzle
in dim light, a chorus of fabricated smiles
there wasn’t a word for the space between his sore arm
and the snapping of nails to cuticle, the twitch splintering
to sawdust sopping up the collision he promised to keep
in this time—
there wasn’t a word for a boy upon the eve of his christening,
his molting lineage collected like expired shells, chips
from botched dental appointments, a cracked cassette case
with its missing tape—the J-card torn along its perforated edges
the collectible trading card inlay missing from the judge’s ruling
