The fungosity of fungoid fungiforms
is something fungused fungivorous fungologists
find fascinating.
By David Edwards
Fairy ring lit by moon
Tiny maiden on mushroom
Blows sweet-tasting kiss
Asks for a tune
Invites to dance
An alluring doom
By Aeronwy Dafies
Butterfly alights
upon a rotting corpse… both
of many colors
By David Edwards
Fungal maiden’s kiss
Spores enter skull, bloom, burst forth
Transform to toadstool
By DJ Tyrer
sprouting underneath
Hiroshima’s fungoid cloud
something other than death
By David Edwards
AGARIC HANDS ACCOST THE LITMUS: A CONCERTINA
With respect to Tiffany Morris and Theresa Krach
By Joseph Bouthiette, Jr.
I. OVERTURE
A cello held fast by mycoid filaments.
Bitters and blues, the amphitheater pitches to and fro, leaning starboard, casting loose mist and torch and feathered spore; rusted swords unsheathed.
The cerulean light is listing and the infection is swelling and the orchestra is escalating and, perhaps, if there was once blood, there is none now.
II. PULSE //
“Be the man I planted, my warrior in the sea.”
Skinless and wet weeping, armored plates traced with dark corrosion driven into flesh. Knotted slabs where hands once were impaled with what once resembled weapons. A face like bleeding knuckles.
And, in the distance, what could be bowstrings, or the wet rattle of lungs overrun.
III. THE LITMUS
A gilded galleon lingers along the island shelf. The aftward sunrays are strangled in cloying clouds, a fungal storm reaching with brackish tendrils to split this flawless hull.
There is no entreating with the wasted mainland, its asperous surface desolate, pockmarked with jagged dunes. There is no egress from the oozing cirrus, its foaming teeth.
IV. ARCHERS AND RUMORS OF ARCHERS
Slopping footsteps on bare stone, the warrior retreats from the husks in the hollow wake. All that remains of the skirmish are skulls fruiting bulbous shards; horse hair, agleam.
At the summit, the warrior chews the carrion landscape. Here, women could birth sagas, and sagas could birth storms.
A lilt in the air beckons, swelling.
V. // THRONE
A throne sloughs away as slag, dragged in the currents of molten vomit traced with magma hurtling toward the coast.
The skin blisters of a woman cradling an infant, she in tribal wear, he naked and exposed. The sand here still yields despite the churning eruption surrounding.
“Open your eyes, child, your sea is changing.”
View From Atlantis 