Brown Dunce Cap

Several species probably pass

under this name wandering

in a subterranean scintillation

that in the fragrant late spring

loosens the cotyledons of

the matrix and fruits forth

these rusty caps tottering

atop powdery stalks which

cloddish schoolboys driven

by youth’s coarse rhythms

kick to a pulp clutching their

battered copies of Theodolus

their scratched perinea smeared

with fennel and mullein salve

while from their wrists swing

fox-snout pouches clattering

with jasper hunks engraved

with dragons or seraphs

serenely strumming theorbos

supine on clouds which they

pilfered from a market stall

unaware in their pride as

they sprayed mycorrhizal

flesh through the meadow

that they were the dunces

being used to spread spores.

Carbon Cushion

From seven forests

we collected soils,

extracted phospholipids

using chloroform-methanol

with a phosphate buffer,

fractioned and quantified

them down to fatty acid

methyl esters we identified

using a gas chromatograph.

Then we centrifuged the freeze-

dried supernatants to extract

amino sugars and saw how

larger contributions of fungal

necromass to the soil organic

carbon pool exhibited a hump-

shaped pattern. Remarkably,

the accumulation benefitted

under increased nitrogen de-

position. Remarkably, these

findings could enhance the

biome under global climate

change, when, elderly and

surrounded by menace,

we retire to our room

spitting a little blood

to work on the book

that will designate our tomb,

leaning feebly over meaning’s

edge to feel the dizziness

of the things unsaid, such as

this often overlooked

furrowed body, its asexual

stage appearing first, some-

times on decorticated wood,

fruiting into an appressed

crust-like structure, closing

our eyes to better apprehend it,

since, though we’ve collected it

as far as southern Florida, it

now only grows within us.

Canary Trich

On my way into the abyss

I said to myself,

Sticky and smooth when fresh,

how came you to this desiccation?

I saw beneath me

a vast storm-tossed forest

in whose crevices I heard

a reproachful warble which

came from a man on horseback,

who bridged the gulf between

what I was and am in an instant

and with the detachment of those

whom death has already drawn

within its shadow told me

to become a child,

but without a child’s pride.

Before his faceless form,

the urgent panting of his steed,

I await, a grim penitent,

my own identification.

Fairy Sparklers

One cannot say,

I will compose poetry,

even when, from an excess

of calculating selfishness,

the gathered materials,

vulgarly dazzling,

accede to one’s power

to assimilate them

to internal laws and

one imagines oneself

nourishing the scions

of the eternal tree.

As soon as one says it

the coal fades

and one’s rural pen

is unprophetic

of the inconstant wind

which might awaken it

to a fleeting brightness.

It is doubtful

that these scurfy

tentacular elements

radiating from an irregular

and twisted stalk

beneath the creeping

buttercup and the ivy-

leaved speedwell

can be defamiliarized

enough to create

a new apprehension

in the reader, the words

representing them

becoming signs

for new thoughts,

arresting, however

briefly, the rhythms

with which the usual

apparitions haunt

our lives.

Orange Earth Tongue

In pursuit of iridescence,

I slipped over the moon-

glazed sill, trailing a specter

slaloming through trout

lilies in the humid air,

midsummer swelling

on the vine, owls moaning

in the tulip poplar crowns.

What was it that led me

to stand trembling like

a roe on a spongy patch

of sphagnum moss

from which emerged

these paddle-shaped objects,

spores crosswalled with age?

My mind, that squamous,

encrusted star, took in

this lesson in erudition,

this gratuitous propulsion

of linguistic charge into

a night of no human

hearers. Save me.

I couldn’t see

their emissions, but

I could see

how their glossolalia

stitched space

to the ground around me.

Joe Fletcher is the author of the poetry collection The Hatch (Brooklyn Arts Press), the novella Jenny Haniver (Bored Wolves, forthcoming), the scholarly monograph William Blake as Natural Philosopher (Anthem), as well as five chapbooks, including Kola Superdeep Borehole (Bateau) and Sleigh Ride (Factory Hollow Press). He teaches at the University of North Carolina and in the North Carolina prison system.