Fungus in Love
Moonrise geyser dissolve hillsides
in silver bubbles. Balcony goes up
in clovers of lichen, chartreuse,
then black, then cigarette grey.
We chase each other through skies littered
with pulsing red stars, gouged torsos and eyes.
Young and prone on the north Atlantic,
I smell of dead fish. Peepers choir
tiny lusts. Lunar wind rocks boats’ masts,
pluck their halyards. Exoplanets pelt us
like chocolate drops or coffee beans. I weep
oranges and eggs with blood-streaked yolks.
The city lies like a skirt of hammered brass,
studded with gas flares and powder flashes. All is lost,
you prophesy. I have scaled clouded mountains
and consulted the terrible yeti; I have spent
hearts’ hours searching. Morning’s salt
mist dims the sky. You crack
your sternum with your two hands
and out spills the city: canyadas, cypresses,
hummingbirds, ledges, termites. I weep hard,
thin-skinned avocados and pink-bellied figs.
From the balcony we watch the sun rise
one last time, eat rolls and drink coffee,
scatter crumbs to birds the size of crickets.
I will dog you to mountain clouds,
yeti’s den. You do not have to look back:
I am there, behind that spiral galaxy,
faint as the Pleiades, speck
in your eye. Planets blacken,
forests smolder for centuries, seas wink
out one by one, carbon dark. Unbearable
waves endure, bleaching beaches.
Search for me on the galaxy’s
utmost horizon. Precipitate me with gravity
and salt. Bring me caked-out crickets
snoozing between sheets of yesterday’s news.
Sharon Kunde is an Assistant Professor at the Maine College of Art and Design. Her research focuses on the racialization of representations of nature and naturalness in the context of the emergence of national literary studies. She has published work in publications including Twentieth Century Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Review, ISLE, and Cincinnati Review, and her chapbook Year of the Sasquatch was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2022.
Amethyst Review 