Fungi                                
by Ella McCrystle © 2004

Ascomycetes
sex-slimed, wet-jellied,
woman-cupped, shine sweat around—
coral-eyelashes
spit-slick

is the Aeluria aurantia
hungry as my orange peel
to curve round phallic fungi?

or white as love—
snow-bleached and dropped?
slowly slowly dripping--
candles in the copse of my
vanilla-creamy briar

+

fuzzy feeling Myxomycetes
salmon-smudged mold tastes titian.
finger-brush pads reach for these
downy kittens:
must-touch perfection,
gotta-stroke gleam
furry innocence

+

Basidiomycetes
folding unfolding
like my brain

collapse in on
my very intelligence which
causes my very confusion
my very sensuality

lost in folds, walls cave,
cerebrum-shrooms bake me
blast me—infiltrate furrows
now grooving now
puckering, always
collapsing, crashing, crumpling

cockles and cockled
i am

+

Mushrooms are Gasteromycetes.
i eat them brown-buttered yellow
smooth as silk stockings slide
sleek down my throat
warm my creases, enfold
my white-laced veil, my unruffled
sex

enveloping horns i
hunger for earth-starred velvet
to nest with birds.