Poetry Exhibitions

by tanesia r. hale-jones

when i die bury me in a mushroom dress

Oyster,  Pleurotus ostreatus

layers of white accordian ruffles, ombre edges tinged a subtle brownish-grey

 the spores will populate my hair, drift upward into my sinus passages  

craning out of my skull

in the damp darkness of my decay, I long to become a fruiting body.

a mycelial network

pulsing with news across the underside of trees. 

But, what if before my death I wore this heavy gown, oyster white?

dragging the earth along pulling with it branches and what have you

a glittering cloud of spores

wafting the magic that is nothing sprung into something

with the most understated growing conditions

each time I turned  I’d leave behind the faint smell of bitter almonds

I’d leave behind mushrooms

growing in the cracks of sidewalks / the cushions of sofas

behind the fridge / a suede coated bathtub

perhaps you will use them as shelves for your books or step stools for your children

nothing is real when you are disappearing beneath mushrooms

when you are gobbled back into the soil with so much delight

when something can so easily be undone

and yet, bury me in the mushroom dress

so that my body voluminous with the toxins of red dye #40 

and break-up cortisol and the not enoughness of my own self-pity 

and the grief I carry and the wild dreams I didn’t do much with 

and the ways I learned to love and to survive 

and the countless hours I stayed up too late 

and the creak in my ankle bone and my stiff shoulder joint 

and small sweetnesses I spoke late at night 

and the creases and dents and all can be gathered back

a winking bit of this underground constellation

when I am dead I will then still hold you up 

you can rest upon me when you are weary

head on a pillow of velvety grayish brown

breath strumming cream-colored gills