One dash of sweet mushrooms for your sweet stew?
By Michelle Yu
• • •
Whisper, whisper, little dear
Let your roots grow forth and flower
Moss towers deep are your great bower
Grow, dear one,
Grow!
Glistening dew on you like drops of blood
Growing poison caps from your little buds
Let your roots grow forth and flower
Moss towers deep are your great bower
Grow, dear one,
Grow!
Glistening dew on you like drops of blood
Growing poison caps from your little buds
Travellers fall down with just one
Bite
One bite of your lovely, chewy, delicate cap
Courting deliciousness but
Finding death instead
Lying gently in soft repose
Brooding, quiet,
Except they're
DEAD
They'll never know what was in their host's stew
Hahahahahahaha ha
Why, why, you cry?
Why am I to be used that way?
Because I once had a mother, dear
Who ate a poison mushroom just like you
Chewed once, and she fell dead cold to the floor
A faraway traveller had come through the door
Offering a hot stew to take the edge off
A bitter cold night
A lonely woman
A delectable child
A little poison in that sweet stew
To steal away with me in the dead of night
Travellers lonely are a blight
They shall die.
Disappear without a trace
In the next batch of my magic mushroom stew
Grow well, my dear
Grow old and cold
Bitter like the tears my spleen cries for my mother
Glistening like the oil my liver cries for my mother
Boiling like the blood river roiling through my veins, crying for my mother
I miss her.
Throwing off tiny bubbles in your stew
Brown foam floating to the top
Skim,
Repeat
Cook for hours, all the way through
Shimmer, sweet mushroom, like a spider's dance as it mates with its partner,
Off goes its head,
And it is eaten
Just like you, my dearie
Grow quiet in this prairie,
now
Repeat
Cook for hours, all the way through
Shimmer, sweet mushroom, like a spider's dance as it mates with its partner,
Off goes its head,
And it is eaten
Just like you, my dearie
Grow quiet in this prairie,
now
Grow well,
Grow cells
Grow to send them straight to hell
A twisty, turny, contortuous hell
No bell will sound their quiet death knell
You will poison them
To death
For me.
Grow cells
Grow to send them straight to hell
A twisty, turny, contortuous hell
No bell will sound their quiet death knell
You will poison them
To death
For me.
• • •
Michelle is a poet and writer who deals in the minute and the moving. Filled with metaphor, her vivid and thought-provoking pieces breathe new life into common, quotidian experiences that often cross our lives without second thought. Her current works explore the profound senses of home, growth and identity, through evocative intimations. @the_sun_shines_back
