Mushroom Chronicles     

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


The mushrooms in the photo aren’t
cooked or chopped or sautéed
in a black iron pan

the stove’s spattered from whatever fried
last night too tired to notice the mess
whatever she can manage after work

is just throw something
on the fire get rawness out
wait until onions turn

that cookbook term ‘translucent’
eat by the drowning drumming tv
rolling quasi-obscene rosaries of ads

political smears blistering lies
telling you to order your doctor to
mend pain with whatever they’re selling

no these are aesthetic mushrooms
circling through time like half-tutus
at the rotting base of a great tree

vibrating in forests drunk on
sun-filtered silence loftiest
branches exhaling sounds

hypnotic to a dreamer’s ear
meditative hum of phosphorescent
fungi singing through the night.


* * * * *

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, MomEgg, Ploughshares, Sumac, Bagel Bards, New Boston Review, WomenPoems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Review, Constant Remembrance, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, etc.  Her stories, one a Pushcart nominee, were published by Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, Broadkill Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, etc.  Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press, and another poetry collection, a story collection, and a novel are in the works.