The Fungal Nymph

by KA Opperman

             art above and below by Jason Barnett

She leaves a trail of toadstools where she walks,

And wears for crown a mushroom diadem;

And tiny toadstools from her lashes stem;

And there is something strange about her locks—

The way those living raven tresses twine

Around my flesh as with some fell design.

Although she has such lovely violet eyes,
Dark kykeon pours through her purple kiss;

And though her limbs' embrace is all my bliss,  

They are not pale like other nymphs I prize—

They are a fungous gray, and half as warm,

Her slender fingers vaguely strange in form. 

And yet her sweet, seductive whispers lull    

Me into trance.... She pants forth perfumed spores,

Of which I deeply breathe through mouth and pores;

Her parasitic fingertips my skull

Invade with every loving, slow caress—

Just why they linger there I dare not guess.

Her amanita-mottled bosom bears

Me off to shadowed lands of mushroom-dreams,

As slumbering I lie there, fungal gleams

Of moonlight spurring what the sun impairs—

The thousand toadstools fruiting from my flesh,

Oblivious, as man and mushroom mesh.

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