The Mouth
  

  Sometimes when you
kiss a mouth it rises to meet you
as a beak.
Erishkigal’s mouth was not like that.
Her mouth tasted
the fullness of mushrooms
fungal flowers fruiting out of the darkness of her throat
the spores of her cloying to every mouth
that encountered hers,
her words so rich they stuck behind
another’s teeth.

Mushrooms do not harness light with chlorophyll
but distill death darkness.
Mushrooms do not feed and then digest:
they digest and then consume,
disintegrating their surroundings.
It does not stop there. Fungi
feeds on the tree, and on the fungi
feeds the ghost pipe, the pale calm,
the release of all pain,
Monotropia Uniflora raises her unblushed head.

Erishkigal’s mouth turned dark with rage.


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