Jessica Purdy

FRUITING BODY

—after Mushroom Figure No. 1 by Josh Salad
Nobody sees us,/Stops us, betrays us   —Sylvia Plath “Mushrooms”


A mushroom erupts 
replacing the head
of the first woman. 

She is born eyeless
in dirt; an earless 
pearl in the moonlight.

She is edible
hallucination.
Her sporadic gift

is a fairy ring  
where the Devil has
set his steel milk churn. 

A person will dance 
until they die or 
go mad. Do not step

inside. She does not
dream of removing
her rich womanhood.

Do not dismiss her.
Wonder at her gills 
and rounded cap, her 

repulsive meta-
morphosis. She’s a
makeshift table, a

whatsit for the floor. 
She is sending her
mycelium strand

network underground.
For hundreds of years 
the mat of hyphal 

threads feed on the dead.
Bullshit only makes 
a woman wander.

JESSICA PURDY holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Sleep in a Strange House was a finalist for the NH Literary Award for poetry. Her poetry manuscript Lung Hours was a finalist in Two Sylvias Press Wilder Book Prize 2025, Codhill Press’ Guest Editor Poetry Series 2023, The Granite State Poetry Prize, and The Dryden-Vreeland Book Prize. Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry, flash fiction, and reviews appear in About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, The Night Heron Barks, SoFloPoJo, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.