Mushrooms and the places they grow

D.S. Maolalai

for several days the room

stank like an armpit –

musty as mushrooms and the places

they foetidly grow. we lay out

in bed, sweat staining my low

thread-count linens,

sticking like swimming-

trunks onto our bellies and waists.

we watched condensation

roll over the closed windows

as the opening petals

of flowers, the wet tongue

of dew. I remember her leg

moving over my upper;

a treeroot, a curving-

boned rock, banking downward

and earthy. flies came

from the kitchen, where we’d left

piles of carrotpeels and stacked

empty glasses so as to save

the on water. we were not slobs

or vagrants: the whole town

was like this – some limit in place 

on the water use during the heatwave.

and I had no AC. and still

we were managing. we lazed

like wild animals, in heat

beneath trees on some hill

in some sunlight, kinked muscle

and the swampish soft

comfort of company,

too tired by choking

on thickened air even to fuck.

D.S. Maolalai fue descrito por un editor como "un poeta cosmopolitano", y por otro como "prolífico, bordeando en la incontinencia". Su trabajo ha sido nominado trece veces para el premio Best Of The Net, diez veces para el premio Pushcart, y ha sido publicado en tres colecciones, recientemente, en "Noble Rot" (Turas Press, 2022).

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