Fall 2015, Volume 19

Poetry by Heidi Lynn Staples

Trail

For my mother Jeanine & sister Jeannie, June 5, 2015

At seventy-four, her ingredients
for life mixed, she’s weathered broken waters,
this friendly question’s answer contains less:

How many children?  I see you mother
trying to seem at ease along the way.
How you didn’t admit her to discover

the one riven away, Net wt. that day—
how at fifteen surrendered the spirit
in you, the places where we love to play,

now may contain catastrophe, protect
palpable absence, loss as what drives us,
how dark matter meets the moment

unsaid on arrival, roar to the touch
how years yearn inspiring you to push

Albaamaha of the Mycelium


              ¡¡          ¡ 
                                ¡ ¡                            ¡

             ¡’ve spent my one m¡ld l¡fe hunt¡ng for w¡ld morals,
bod¡es g¡v¡ng egg and volva asway ≈ that flyway ¡  ¡           ¡¡          ¡  ¡¡      ¡ 
¡                                      ¡        ¡ 

          they bear hear beneath the sound of these veering feet
                                             ¡  ¡      ¡¡          ¡  ¡¡      ¡ 
                                                                      ¡ ¡

of spores ¡f each of one puffball became a morel
¡  ¡        ¡¡          ¡  of the understory ≈ how the fru¡t¡ng bod¡es could
c¡rcle our earth w¡th a netted sk¡rt more a mature
                       ¡ ¡         ¡ 
                                                      ¡

           st¡nkhorn lack¡ng a sk¡rt ≈ look ≈ v¡xen parasol ≈
¡   ¡       mut¡nus phallus ≈ st¡nkhorn ≈ swell¡ng thrum hear dear reader ≈ ¡          ¡   
you stalked me walked ground around small manners ≈ fru¡t body¡¡            ¡ 
                                                             ¡           ¡           ¡ ¡                 ¡  ¡ 
                        ¡                  ¡    ¡ ¡         ¡ 

sputter¡ng m¡n¡ature mutter¡ngs ≈ bra¡n l¡ke a sponge
¡   ¡       loam foams mag¡c too made s¡ck sod’s bra¡n stem ≈ what sod ¡s
th¡nking g¡ft to badgers ≈ deer ≈ m¡ce ≈ p¡gs ≈ rabb¡ts ≈ squ¡rrels
         you fly lover ≈ land¡ng on the sl¡me ≈ gobbl¡ng l¡t up
                   ¡¡¡ 
                            ¡ ¡
                                                                               ¡

Albaamaha of the Florida Sand Dollar



               
Smetimes I thrash in t  say please dn’t dick the waters ≈
           get a bit cilia with this ne girl cllectr ≈
she calls yu her g✪✪d cents ≈ she says she’s just wrked s hard
                                                                                       ✪   ✪✪

t  gather yur far-fathm-sail-beynd-the-break-zne
          t turn yu in fr beach-cmbed-fr-sale-at-lcal-shp ≈
Smetimes I stir & stir ≈ she stres & stores, yu g
                                 ✪         ✪                          

                                                                                    ✪   ✪
pale as a smthering’s lving hund pleases s-dulled
           peple in deep brands ≈ smetimes I imagine that beached
ne f yu are streaming at the t✪p f yur tube feet ≈
                                         ✪          ✪

                            ✪  ✪                             ✪   ✪

I’m sht shre what t✪  d, just hw t glint her t sea
           the bunty ✪f yur flwer muth pens the center
f her hungering bdy ≈ hw hand it t her  
                     tss farther than her father’s defiledest feverish schemes

                                                                   

                                                          
                                                          ✪     ✪                       
           

 

 

                                                                 ✪

 

 

 

BIO: Heidi Lynn Staples is the author of Noise Event (Ahsahta, 2013) and co-editor of Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she lives with her spouse, daughter, dog, cat, four hermit crabs, three exotic cockroaches, two smartphones, and many other multifoliate realities.