this is an introduction to the creamy
mycology of the mighty woodlands
in primal sanctuary life and rot are wrought
together through fungus so I must learn
all the names in iNaturalist
conversant with my surrounding ecology
poking in the undergrowth for Lactarius
an indigo milk cap weeping latex
a node in a network of things within which
everything is edible once so suckle on
a jostling of fruiting bodies
in the unmaking of a fallen maple
golden oysters glow from sloughing bark
gills velvety on the fingertips and damp as  
the slime mould brawny in the loam
all the earth’s infinitesimal efforts
in splendid vigorous vulgarity
puffballs farting out millions of lives
and stinkhorns wooing flies with stench
agonised and ecstatic through the dirt
a destroying angel rising
begetter of slow and terrible deaths
so I am pressed to check and check again 
my species IDs my risk appetite that fled
when nothing could compare
with the pleasures of a foraged feed seeking
the ultimate of earthstars its pale spores
spurting rivulets of sweetest flux that pour
back into the soil which is our mother 
so we marvel at the strangeness of this milk

novelty horrors of the infinite fusion
machine blending childhood monstrosities
into interconnected oneness
the wetness of the Pokedex as fluid as
curdling milkshakes until I become utterly
convinced of Miltank’s supremacy
that little cow so proudly udder forward
even as she is bred with too many beasts
she retains her essential qualities
these pixel mommy milkers
perky despite the individual’s dissolution 
she can be anything and still herself
a legendary thunderbird mantled in 
sloppy clotted cream splatters or
that wrestler champ a beefy hunk of spunk
posing with teats out like raw bratwursts
a painter smearing her own fluids on canvas
a false flower squirting paralytic buttermilk
a pregnant hound dragging a heifer’s udder 
and when you mate her with a god she is
seraphic upon wings of cosmic crema
creating the universe with the question
got milk? and I know now why our god left
to the shops for milk and never came back
to the profound wrongness of Milfing
a pinkly polluted orb with noxious fumes 
turned spumes of original elixir her nips dripping
colostrum rich nectar secretions I share
with my friend who is herself a MILF
knowing babes have no choice but to drink




Notes: ‘Lactarius’ names a family of milk-cap mushrooms that ooze creamy fluid. ‘Milfing’ refers to a fan-made Pokémon fusion combining

the cow ‘Miltank’ with the toxic bomb ‘Koffing’ – more similarly cursed Pokémon fusions are described in the poem and sourced from the wiki here.