Iris is the Greek goddess of running errands and delivering messages. She is the manifestation of the rainbow, but in this poem, she appears as the neural tapestry of the earth: a fungal thread that weaves time and body together in a relationship that emerges from composting life-giving conditions.
Over the course of the last year, I’ve been having conversations with her as I was walking my usual mushroom routes in places that look like nature here in the city where I currently live. Following the routes has been a ritual to me as much as a performance of a homeland that I had to leave.
Mushroom picking is a cultural practice, what I come from, what I have digested, passed through my body, and built up of the labor of gathering and pleasure of eating. But here, in this city, it becomes a conversation with desire and ruin as a space for translation and breaking down of language.
