Harvest

Abstract

Harvest Kieron Walquist (bio) [ See PDF for formatting of the poem. ] I. Chanterelle You cut the mushroom head + leave it overnight face down then a chanterelle spore print on tinfoil— a soft firework a white fern— you show me how to scrape the murmur with a pocketknife to score the little life into a mason jar inoculated ryegrass you can be patient easy with me II. Oyster It shone florescentin the bathroom along the carpet + bathtub border— we washed the outside off only for the mushroom to jungle in when you yanked the inch-high stem as if it were a teenager's boombox cord I unzipped part of me thanked you your willingness [End Page 45] + the other part had lost a comfort— to imagine the oyster an umbrella keeping an unseeable being dry after my shower III. Trumpet Once after sex we laughed about being fruiting bodiesyour breath a warm whistle across the bottle-mouth of my collarbone you said we should flush throughout this season before we were found + picked clean but that night we were boundless you were my comb tooth + I was your trumpet IV. Honey Fungus Their mycelium reaches for milessleeps across state lines you tell me while we hunt in early Junefor coral that if I'm lost among the trees don't look for the sun but the fungi Press your ear to the ground Listen for its pulse Let the orchard orient you I ask [End Page 46] if I were lost where would you be V. Golden Teacher A generous pinch of psilocybin brought me to worship I was a dancer in wool socks the world met me in that melting the bite + beauty of a tongue kiss to a battery something like that how I adored every layer of clothing you took off of me until I realized your hands were my hands slowly defeathering myself VI. Shiitake From an oak older than I'll ever be to the kitchen stove stir-fry shiitakes take on taste you tell me a shadow of other ingredients but it's only texture tough works the jaw like jerky smells of a sore one looks at after ripping [End Page 47] off a band-aid when you turn away I spit VII. Poison Cups A bouquet of night tossed down the log no longer a dead elm but a flute again + again I asked you why were they poisonous no reason you said some are just born bad VIII. Morels In an issue of Missouri Conservationist a nine or ten-year-old me is posing shirtless a dried-apricot-complexion my nipples two dirty pennies I'm wearing morels as fingernails my mouth giving its best grrrthere I'm severe or sassy or stoked or scared I can't tell anymore the title reads Monster Morels the title reads Monster it's your favorite picture [End Page 48] Kieron Walquist Kieron Walquist is a queer, neurodivergent writer and MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. His work appears, or is forthcoming, in Bennington Review, GASHER, Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review, Puerto del Sol, Small Orange, and elsewhere. He lives in Missouri. Copyright © 2022-2023 Pleiades and Pleiades Press