Shroom Apocalypse
By Richard Schiffman
photo by Mariam Gab
After the deluge, they’re popping up fast,
a pimpled pox of pallid shrooms,
puny members swell tumescent
cracking earth-egg’s humus shells,
donning post-apocalyptic bonnets,
daisy chains of moonlit domes,
gilled as sharks and cute as buttons,
hoisting clods of moldy duff,
fungal, Mongol-horded armies,
mountain-moving mycelia,
creeping up on sleeping cities,
hoodied toughs on every corner,
meek and dapper Mussolinis,
squat Il Duce’s of decay
casting nets in fetid mulch, rooting,
grasping, grabbing, routing,
flouting order, decomposing,
taking over all that’s under,
making clean by playing dirty,
punching up with fists of sponge
Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and other publications. His first poetry collection “What the Dust Doesn't Know” was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.
