Mushrooms Can Consume Nuclear Waste
Without a taste, not a tingle, no trace
of that namesake cloud. It cannot be said
enough: they root in the walls of Chernobyl
and use the filth to grow until it’s gone.
Just like that, history capped, then we can
eat it like it’s from the store on Sunday.
They’ll swallow up the plastic islands, too.
I tell my daughter on our dinner walk,
the lowering sun too bright to look at.
She’ll only let me hold her hand at dark.
Why are we doing anything else?
she asks. We pass little tan caps sprung up
overnight from spongy soil at the end
of a rainy summer. I surrender. Save us.
Kate Kearns is the author of You Are Ruining My Loneliness (Littoral Books, 2023) and How to Love an Introvert (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Kate’s work has appeared in Maine Women Magazine, the Maine Sunday Telegram “Deep Waters” section and Maine Public’s “Poems from Here”. Her poems have also been published in Salamander, Peregrine, Rustica, Sugar House Review and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Lesley University. Learn more at www.katekearns.com.