mycota

we are the mycota: spinners of the mortal loom,
hunters of nematodes and springtails,
chitinous endoskeleton of earth,
fascia of infinity.

swaying with the improvised dance of deep time,
did we come here on an asteroid?
we’ll never tell.

we taught trees how to have roots and humanoids how to feel.
our mother tongue is the language of rot.
we are always lichenizing, in love;
soil sponges and sourdough starters.

we inoculate every being with life-death-life,
seeding clouds, sowing hyphal highways.
our divine comedy? the notion of binaries.

Saint Ergot, Saint Saccharomyces,
Saint Psilocin, Saint Amanita. ours is a
multispecies doctrine, the gospel of chocolate and wine.
we are dendritic ontology on the interstellar stage.

come rest your bones on our mycelial mats,
arbuscules like IV drip.
we are bound to otherness and sameness
like particle and wave.

we need not convert you to our cosmology – we live
on you, in you, and through you
and you exist because of us.

give us your flesh, your petrochemicals,
your radioactive wastelands,
for we are anything but picky eaters.

we’ll lie about our age and say
we’re only a billion (and a half),
and we’ll secretly inherit
everything you leave behind.


Anna C. Wermuth

Anna was pondering speculative fiction by age 11, when she attempted to outline a novel called The Tenth Dimension; she has since become completely obsessed with the otherworldly realm of fungi. You can read more of her writing at http://entanglements.substack.com and learn of her teaching endeavors at http://mycelialentanglements.com.

Art by Nethery Wylie: https://www.netherywylie.com/