bearing teonanácatl¹
below the Sierra Mazateca;
telling me to live as a grizzly
of great joy
mauling crouched guarding my underbelly.
In a kitchen with a collapsed ceiling,
I stuff mushrooms clinched in my fist
into my mouth. Spawned in birdseed;
They taste like tree nuts.
They heal me through the vacuum of fear –
break the soul’s rocky soil with blood vessels.
I rock back and forth feeling bodiless, weak
as a calf and laughing,
born.
- Nahuatl word for Psilocybe mexicana