This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.
Illustration by Rawan Hayat
found text from Mushrooms of the Northeast: A Simple Guide to Common Mushrooms
Some fair distance from here, rather than ending time abruptly
we will cut open the world like the spoke of a wheel. Her spine nothing
but long dangling teeth, veins net-like and scattering from the long
black bruise. This world will be over and then reproduce. In the wide space,
where the common grocery store will change to dust, attachment methods
will be complex — some specimens will cross the jagged
ridge above the loose featureless black. Miniature tubes, numerous, look-alike,
may fashion ends in the wild underside, the sponge racetrack where a pink light
affects the eye, clear at last. Angular folds, unique gills, spores coarse enough to
cut. Tiny shrunken seeds will ripen and burst from your hand. Will you
care for them? Raise them to have trumpet faces? In this book,
you will not find help. Only a three layer knife. Or a lens facing the flesh,
free to be studied and known. A thin half is enough for a print, you know.
Oh! A sound will appear from above. Free in the easy air we will make.
Do you see her? The young bear, brownish, tiny in the crowded wood.
Sam Losee (they/she) is a poet, flower farmer, and Adventure Time enjoyer from the Hudson Valley, NY. After they graduate in May, they plan to finish knitting their first pair of gloves.