heart rot

Heart Rot [1] “ a fungal disease that causes the decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Fungi enter the tree through wounds in the bark and decay the heartwood. The diseased heartwood softens, making trees structurally weaker and prone to breakage” (wikipedia). [2] out. the world … our hearts crumbles apathy rots so let’s face ourselves & release our sins into the wind~~ heart <3 on a bright day, rot :( sunshine sneaks through scattered leaves \ atop a lush, live oak tree; not just dancing across burly branches, casting for trees~ shadows of freedom onto joyous, / fertile grounds of liberation. heart rot is / | / | / / | unchecked / | / supremacy; / / / \ \ / this entire godforsaken “amerikan” (anti- ) “society,” the vitriolic bile that undergirds \ | \ \ enabling | | | \ rich & powerful str8 white men its manifestations: \ / \ to destroy us all self-righteous | / contradiction, | / consumer domination, \ supremacy is a mere twig settler occupation, ============== on the scale of cosmic eternity, commodity fetishism, =========== a futile aberration amidst the cartesian dualism, abundant roots of serenity non-profit careerism we must understand the problem supremacy | and identify it within ourselves only then can we change only as we change do we begin to (eco-) grieve. we start to understand that our hearts are rotten we begin the lifelong practice of releasing supremacy. we allow the mycelial spores of mutuality to liberate our wretched hearts / because we understand the alternative: \ earth’s revolt \ \ damned

Her regenerative cleanse; cop city building anthropic justice for the parasites; /

/ | supremacy denying, for the all-american damned; pipeline constructing, / we, the damned, of the colonial holiday celebrating white supremacist amerikan nation, cola popping, jersey rocking, box store shopping, three-SUV-per-household driving, affluent suburb living yes, this is the choice we face our world the supremacist world must end whirling, whispering, washing away into the wake. we must instead choose the beginning of the next world do you have hopes, fears / & dreams about death? rivulet i hope if i die, amidst a it’s by drowning

& a spiny softshell turtle bb nibbling on my how about you? my worst nightmare is being swarmed by wasps; stingers piercing, skin welting, until… anaphylactic shock. if that happens, just know that i failed i remained an all-amerikan damned who liked to pretend they’re better than “”those”” white ppl but in reality, aren’t :) we all survive the innocent because the truth is… all of us through earth’s revolt; the damage is irreversible meanwhile, the ones who never asked for this… they’re going to die first. and our non-human relatives splendid fauna and feral kin they’re doomed meanwhile, we the privileged and wretched from behind our iPhones, we’ll watch the fallout. so what’s the point? we live to release supremacy; why does any of this matter? to scramble as it crumbles; monuments to our capitalist overlords crumbling right before our eyes the wreckage that began years, generations, centuries past; before we came to consciousness; before we realized we are the problem before we realized our hearts are rotten. all of it crumbling. we lament our casualties / / each other we survive the innocent. hearts rotten with grief. our ecology, we must live better, in right relations with ourselves, but it won’t \ | \ dandelions bloom in the interstices; fungal spores pierce ours because what we learned before was a bunch of damn lies because life goes on life can only go on there won’t be a rupture no such magical rupture where one day the present breaks from the past. a tree can fall over. one individual tree can, when it’s become rotten, and when it can no longer withstand itself. bigger they are; harder they fall. one of us might die too. we might be rotten or innocent and still die. many of us will die. many are dying. many non-human relatives went extinct LONG ago. but life itself… life itself won’t die. there will not be a unifying rupture. we ’ re stuck. life goes on… so we proceed letting our hearts rot out. there’s no turning back. \ our hearts need to rot out. to purge the poison & \

\ | release supremacy. so we can heal and stop destroying ourselves releasing supremacy is re-living, re-thinking; | \ each other savoring mushroom spores that infiltrate our sinuses; \ / / pungent reminders that we, too, are alive \ | letting ourselves have an allergic reaction | / restraint | letting our eyes water and noses drip / / boundaries, \ / / / / | acceptance, | embracing inter-dependence; making sacrifices; un-locating loss rage, / catching a fraction of a glimpse of our humanity; multiplicity, multitude, / | / | / releasing our grip, tension flowing from your (yes, your) fingertips; / | from your shoulders, neck, legs, toes / | realizing you aren’t important enough for hell; / / / / seeing satan everywhere anyway / | shutting up, being quiet, putting our heads down, listening / / acknowledging how small we are; listening to the trees, for once they have heart rot too they glow nonetheless~ even the fallen | / \ \ / so can we </3 \ | we must purge the poison and re-member rebirth. we must wake from a nightmare of our own ancestral co-creation reparations must be our daily praxis. exorcizing the colonizer-demon within. dialectical self-de(con)struction. earth’s revolt. if we die, it will be on Her terms, not ours; she loves </3 us, so why don’t we f*cking act like it? X we beg forgiveness; we ask why yet on a molecular level, we know our bodies remember the damage we caused the land remembers from the rolling plains of the “Tennessee” “Valley,” to the mystical, mountainous horizons cradling our curiosity the land remembers will she forgive us? \

“100 corporations produce 70%+ of emissions,” and yet all of us are complicit in capitalism’s relentless expansion patriarchy rampant resource-hoarding gaslighting saviorism no we are not the heroes of this story instead, let us be its destroyers at long last, let us face the truth we must let our ego die | because we think we ’ re more important than we are; our world ends because of that, or in spite of it perhaps both? let’s fall in love with being mediocre simply human /

| let’s process the untenable past, together: recall, regret, shame, grief, compassion, repeat \ dwell, get stuck, acknowledge, quietly adapt. / | maybe toppling a few statues along the way… 0.0 \ screaming, crying, cursing the person you wish you never were. the relationships you destroyed. the college degree you wasted $250k on. the flight you didn’t need to take. the system you chose not to destroy. wishing, pretending the future could be disconnected from the past…

Heart Rot: Spell of Unbinding

by Ryen Goebel

There is a wound beneath the bark (Within the body of the Dreamer is a hollow, lightning made or animal marked, a doorway for pale silent seekers-- hands of decay )

Enter, Eater the sapstrong, the stonedark sunken quiet of Life removed from Life (Loneliest this flesh stranded beyond years, where sap no longer flows, a place apart from Time preserved in emptiness)

O sunlight creature, the world has not abandoned you

Unguard the secret places-- Return to soil in the smallest hands

Record in rings, Unseal: Remember the warmth that comes from changing Every true thing you bury with your heart will wake again.

10th Street Huntington, WV

by Jessica Anderson

When I felt most like a part of this place, I was high as a kite. Driving with the windows down, Playing Anders Osborne real loud, Sunglasses on

I waved to the big dude who’s always on his porch. He wears white tee shirts and props himself up Like George Washington crossing the Delaware, Phone and cigarette in hand

I waved at Dante that handsome man, With his two off-leash pitbulls that are so obedient. He’s some sort of a professional fighter

He remembered me from a Christmas party a year or so ago I was dancing like crazy, Digging myself into some winter depression

One day he saw me walking and stopped, gave me a lift to work. Well, I waved to him.

There’s a place a few blocks up from here called The Office Back when I was happy, I wanted to get in

“Oh honey, they’ll never let you in You could knock for hours I been in there once, and I feel proud of that.”

I saw through a worn out part of the window covering I saw Christmas lights I saw a bar in there, old guys

I waved to the old man on the other side of the street, Who sits on his porch and drinks beer everyday. He lives off social security and grows tomatoes His roommate died and his rent went up and he might get evicted He remembers my name and likes to ask me Questions about work

I think he thinks I’m a college student. He and I both really like to wave to each other For some reason

Heading down 5th avenue to the grocery store, The lights were green and it was spring.

Walking home one night, a man was following me, So I had to deal with that

I crossed the street at some unpredictable place

To see what he’d do

If I walked home, he’d know where I live

“Is that Ms Anderson?” from a dark porch

I learned then that my student is my neighbor Ken is a man in his late twenties That comes off as late thirties

I met his cousin and we shot the breeze. He tried to give me a bottle of promethazine, Some kind of syrup.

I used to see him when I walked to and from work He was always laughing and joking around He failed my class because he wouldn’t do the work. He tried to talk me into letting him off everything

I liked the small town that night

The building across the street is full of heroin. Every night, I watch cars sit out front Someone sitting there for hours

I watched cars stop at the side door around the corner. Sometimes they parked in front of my apartment And dropped their needles on the sidewalk.

I remember being the one sitting in the car, Outside of Angie’s building, making a stop with a friend. The person who lived in that place died a few months later He was the relative of someone who ran the bar, I think.

Hank the police chief saw me walking home after work, Rolled down his window, got off the phone, and stopped to talk I met him at a concert the first night I lived here

We were on the front row of a Todd Snider show. Later, I ran into Hank at a neighborhood meeting during local election time We stood in the back at the snack table the whole time, And he told me the dirt on these guys while they gave their speeches, Introducing their candidacy for this or that He introduced them to me when they came to shake his hand.

He called one guy a capitalist pig

He remembers my name, too, and likes to talk to me about work

I situated my hammock to look out my windows

I didn’t cover them I laid there and stared off in space

One time I woke up at four o’clock in the morning

Because the windows were open, And I heard men talking to each other outside and not making much sense By the time I looked, it’d been a while, and I knew The cops were out there too.

The man was stark naked And making no sense.

“Why’s that cat here Here it is All the way from Australia ”

“Because this is a cat-tastrophe, man ”

The cop talked him into an ambulance by telling him He was taking a ride on a helicopter

At six in the morning on a different day I made coffee and sat there in my hammock

A cop was out front

One went in the side door of that heroin house across the street. It was still dark and covered with snow

More cops came quietly They went right up the stairwell and into the apartment across from mine on the third floor

One cop came out with an assault rifle, put it in the trunk of a civilian car and drove away

A German Shepherd with a cop went inside.

Cops came and went

There was a SWAT team vehicle, and their marked bullet-proof vests looked like a bad action movie. There were cops in all the snowy alleyways Waiting in their cars for hours.

I never did see them bring anyone out, the place seemed empty But they used a blanket to cover the window when they saw me watching. So there were things I didn’t see

I did see a raccoon on the chimney one evening

She comes out some evenings and takes in the view

I looked up, from my hammock, watching the leaves in the neighborhood change A fluttering bird at the top of a tall, tall tree ended up to be a plastic grocery bag Kristen was there, she saw it. It was still there when I left

A Little Grief

By Chris Barton

How remorse to know only here will I see you seated in the warmth of the perfect field quoting our favorite TV shows Grass inside my forehead in a poem outside of time. Just talking like this now gives the wilt of our descent a little more meaning

The interstate lights shine brighter than spring trees

Do I sound bleak thinking about what all our living has turned into?

Compounding interest rates, uncanny loneliness, a glossy, capital Life printed across an aluminum can Let’s at least cheers about it

The endings The miles of cool sheets of exciting wind. Plain wanting. Our futures of becoming what we were not held onto by and could not hold

Death and Decay at Jamie’s Place

For Jamie, who gave more than the pipeline could ever take from him. Somewhere, on a mountaintop bided for time an old man is dying day by day, trying to show us what could have been

The ginseng is all dug up and the wells have run dry the deer still rut missing one less mountainside

There is life in the decay. and beauty too. but the end is close now and the men with guns draw near.

In the morning, the contractors will find his bones strewn among the base of the dozers but for now, in one last act The old man lays back, and says “let them come ”

This is it Oblivion and it's funny how even in the face of mountains love can seem so big

Today, love is an old man dying day by day, trying to show us what could have been.

by Christian Shushok

Enamel And Amber

by Julian Morrison

A lover told me about a field amid trees i lost his hand he told me his name rolled over in the truck bed it felt worn already threadbare and old the knit quilt tickles my nose it feels warm already red, scratching, holding out against cold he asked for mine with a tremble with the shaky anticipation of the prophet

He tugged me out there past wrong-doing and right-doing. His name is pine sap thick on the tongue. I’ll tell it to you later.

We were at the diner with the sticky blue faux leather, you know the one He spoke through coffee and breathed steam and I gasped I took his hand and from there the story goes tailspin.

He gave me a lesson I need teach A word to pass from mouth to mouth Over dinner and under cover(s) You could call it daisy chain godhood I’ll tell it to you later.

He took half a bottle to my adornments He said I was perfect and made it so. He cut from me rot I didn’t know I had He made me something new Got right to the heart of it.

I’m not sure what I answered at the time it rang through trees Attis Attis Attis just the same with the meaning of fire.

I missed the moment he started crying he missed the moment I left this is the lesson

The field is empty this means more than without trees The field is empty, meaning everything we saw it together smoking and spinning in the dark the fire threw the most beautiful shadows i’m in the trees

Out there in the field there is peace and haven old teacher called it awakening old poet called it god, told me he’d meet me there god told me the trees are made of flames not yet burned the old poet taught me that the name of god is fire.

I have heard the lesson and am now out in the dark moving fast over red clay and black dirt. I have heard the name of the lover and I can now hear no other. I am sprinting, as he has left without me. All I needed was a moment. I only left him for a moment

I only left for a minute his name is in my teeth he must have missed a piece it’s dark out here and I can’t see i am on fire i don't know how to find the field he beckons from forever away. how could I do this right? where did I go wrong? it has all gone tailspin lemme take a second to give it to you straight. I promised you that. my lovers are all called the same. the lover’s name is Attis. he was adored by dead trannies and lesbians where every road led they called each other god in his name he lives again in my breath

All that ever echoed through the carolina pine is the holy appellation of my lover boy

Attis Attis Attis its been a long time now and i’m still runnin’ the trees have started to crumble they are afflicted by something creeping it no longer awaits the growth of the seedling it whispers about flesh and bones it wraps tight around the neck of the stem this rot too has a name and i will cut it from each tree and ask them their name soft and kind and they will tell me theirs and in tears i will know they will never meet me there lover, there’s a field out there past wrong and right doing let’s run take my hand and we’ll find it together my coffee tastes like dirt

I will teach you that your gendersex is built onto you like a shitty trailer addition I will take sharp edge to your rot and catch you when you fall. the light of the buzzing porch lamp is ending you like an infection there is no poetry in the body killer. there is no art in the heartrot.

I exhale through steam you know what happens next

My name is Attis what’s yours?

The Five Stages Of Wilting

by Grady DeRosa

long after our glass melts there will be the last flower on earth wondering why the ground refuses affection of any kind long after language is spoken there will be the last birdsong singing out to find a future & hearing only silence

& all the beings who slept through winter waking early with sore eyes wondering why the icicles are all dripping & after we join the fossils our spirits will walk the earth huddled around the last flower asking it for guidance but it will say nothing to indulge us in our bargain only to accept the petals as they wither into tomorrow

“Florida Flow” by Robyn “Avalon” Crosa

Even if it doesn’t work out Between me and you I’ll always be your fan. I have to be the Goddess knows You’re a part of who I am You are in my heart and soul.

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

I come from the peninsula. You come from the islands. We are pirates in the Caribbean. I have often dreamed of yuh. In a past life we were more than friends. What becomes of us remains to be seen.

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine. Light up my life.

Ocean Waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Will our paths cross this time?

Will we meet again?

Will I know you in this life?

Will we be more than friends?

I will always be your fan loving you from afar. I have to be, the Goddess knows you are a shining star!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean Waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Panthers spar with alligators Here in the tall green grass.

But I will never spar with you my love, Whatever comes to pass.

I will always have a soft spot for you.

I never would desert you. And after everything that’s happened now, Please know I never meant to hurt you!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Down in Seminole, down in Pinellas, Down in Miami Dade, What do the Seminoles tell us?

We will run away to the Everglades! We never will surrender!

In Weeki Wachi there live some mermaids!

Their hearts are warm and tender!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Ghosts in the Boathouse

by Victoria Jayroe

What is it to be born if not shrieking in terror at sudden sentience–To rather be silent and still in the chaotic midst of this world’s merciless mawing

What is it to live if not to gasp at the speckled air To claw against the melting earth and its moon-yanked currents

What is it to be held, only after.

Rainwater tears through the tattered hammock, the vestige of a world with too many holes to hold him here

What kind of life did he hope to find on the other side of time’s tide, mummified in memory, darkness and dearness

Nothingness?

Even decay is an extant form of life

And so, he tore down the house of himself, to return back to the dust the worn planks and rusted nails that splintered and gouged at him, breaking down the empty rooms of himself that he could no longer bear to warm

And then the house went the same way he had Suddenly, no longer

Later, you and I would trace the spectral skeleton of the rooms in the grass the earth below us remembering the growth of your feet

We recalled where your sleeping dogs used to lie

The cats paws falling like late winter on the weathered wood of the stairwell removed board by board

The land trust dissolved. Your trust in what you thought you knew, washed out under the feet of strangers now free to trod along the time-worn paths that took you home.

But the boathouse will remember the sound of his hammer, resounding with the wake against its stone walls that will outlive us all

Sometimes to live is just to have your name be a pressed flower in the folds of a memory– the idea of you lingering like a fine dust–was it ice or ash? The nuclear winter of a nuclear family

This might be the only afterlife: Adrift on the longing breaths and dew soaked lashes of those who wanted more time before time became its own thumping dirge

These woods will never quite be free from the questions that linger like phantom limbs and keep us wishing in wells gone dry

But, it’s not that you can never go home again Home, too, decomposes and recomposes

It will leave you like a sigh that dissipates into the fog of the bay, and return as the sparkling squint of sunlight that makes you think of lighter days than this before we all knew such loss

Heart Rot

By Amelia Brady

Delightful death, singing spores, the mushrooms bloom where tree used to be New beasts emerge from the softest places and bird eggs hatch in the cavity Hollowbone soft heart, now worthless as timber, and saved from commodity by necrosis Heartwood crumbles, sings a weepsong, glorysong

Listen!

You, too, are rich with the rot! Changing your shape, breathing, and pouring your life into the dirt Offer up your wound, sing your lump of meat into the world, raw and bleeding in the wind

The soil is rich, deep and dark in you I see it growing mold

Untitled By Micah Morse [2]

the heritage of love abiding, dissolution of the self— here in the quiet depths slick and smothered

I trace hairs along the periphery of flesh and decay broken limbs and sinew, fibers muscle-wet, verdant beneath the skin and the supple bloom of your visceral bouquet—

I paint myself in bands of oil honey in the dark, a womb-song inviting you the carnivore's embrace what is love but appetite the taste of you dissolving into fat-riddled marmalade savored on the tongue and tucked into the hollows of my gums the taut swelling of over-ripened fruit and its rapturous burst against the teeth to be penetrated by the sickly mass, compost ichor, tender embrace—to drown in the jelly of the quiet growth, shadows mumbled or speaking ripples in the gut amid the buzz and bristle of prayers rapped out on chitin supplication carved in bark; alms begged in the shape of memory what it was to stand alone and the fetid rush of joining as we come together, fertile in the dirt

Untitled

by Sarah Vance

Some days I remember the beautiful May morning my wife and I stood on the driveway with our six young children and stared up into the sky as a mother bird frantically flogged the fatal metal of an excavator Her babies screaming as they fell from the shelter she had so carefully crafted

The tree The nest The babies

The mother - broken

On those days, when I remember, I hope my babies don’t And if I still prayed, I would whisper, please do not let this be a prophecy of the world we are handing over to them And me, a perpetrator, standing on concrete I paid to pour, on what had once been home to wild and beautiful things

The mountains The water The air

The mother - broken

Heart Rot

My sickness has made me a habitat for suffering

I did not deserve this, no sick person does, but it happened & it happened to me.

I hope I get to see another spring.

The way the lily of the valley adorn my feet

I will enjoy the view until it’s gone or I am

by Cara Morgan

What the Heart Wrought

by Kincaid Jenkins

He waited to cut down the tree

Until she had died

Until he was certain she would

Never read beneath its branches

Never embrace its limbs again as

A daughter caught in the tree’s embrace

In her youth she protested

Feeling chained to the nature of it

“It ’s heart rot ” he would say

Pointing to the conks of fungus

Growing like festering boils

A blight upon the very bark

Where below a death lay stirring

And she would respond

That the roots remained strong

That it had grown here from the idea of

An acorn falling from orbit like a capsule

To plant and find purchase on their land

To become a part of their family

“It will fall on the house” he claimed

But she won the argument saying

“ Then we must give it more love

For it ’s alive, just dying inside, like me”

Like me

Her words echoing further down

The corridors of his mind

And so love they gave and patience he had

Until a day in spring which found him

Returning from the place he had laid her to rest

Garbed in funeral attire, tears in his eyes

Walking down the path like an executioner

Carrying a stick of fli nt and forged steel

Hefted over his shoulder towards the tree

That had stood purely on the strength

Of her heart over the rot, eating away at it

Like so much cancer inside her

He swung the ax, each splinter of wood

Evoking a memory of her in his eye

Counting the hits it would take to fall

Eleven in total, one for every year of her life

And trying to find meaning in this number

As though she were talking beyond the grave

But the tree lay fallen on her words

With some unbearable finality

And he too fell, kneeling now

Dig ging through the mealy mulch inside

Like an autopsy, uncovering the poison

Discovering this discolored continent

Growing through the heart of it

Weeping openly over the wound

Fully understanding what the rotting heart

Requires of fathers left behind

Removing the things they would rather keep

Wondering aloud wh o is to say

That trees have no souls

Or that men do