Zoe Boyer

Fruiting Bodies

July already. The days just go and  

I can’t keep my feet beneath me, 

though the Midwest air is thick enough  

to catch my fall, brimming over 

at the slightest provocation,  

weeping onto the steaming pavement, 

flooding my aching joints. I know,  

now, the sorcery of old women

prophesying storms before ions  

have begun their clamor, though 

I haven’t lived long enough 

 to feign wisdom, only hard enough

that I’ve prised my body apart  

like a shoreside dinner; already 

gulls are circling, drawing beads  

on sinew slackened from the bone. 

I take cover beneath the dripping

bower of sweetgum and maple, 

my brain stewed to a sickly ooze 

of thought. But look how 

damp has swamped the logs, fed the 

undulant creep of white jelly fungus—

gyral folds sloughing sun-skinned  

and quivering from the bark. 

Beautiful, all this flesh swelling and

slumping in summer’s yawning heat—

I could soften into illness. 

I could be so ruined and radiant.