Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #16

Mushroom Armies Raked out, they bulge back— new breasts, cancerous brains.

A fungus big as a plate falls to ruin, sprouting a brush of soft blue hairs. Every night a fierce brigade lifts pallid arms, spotted fists. Which can be eaten— beige umbrellas or pancakes sprinkled with cinnamon?

The newest mushrooms sprout rose caps. When I break their skin, they bruise at once to Prussian blue.

This means they’re poison.

Yellowing jellies spill out over dirt. I touch a puffball, releasing a breath of smoky spores. I won’t touch the corpse plant’s clammy flower. A bee hurries into its cold white mouth and blunders away, stunned by the waxy permanent chill.

Barbara Daniels Barbara Daniels has received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the most recent in 2020. She has had poems appear lately in Permafrost, Westchester Review, Philadelphia Stories, and others. A collection, Talk to the Lioness, was published in 2020.