September 2020 – Page 2 – TINY SEED LITERARY JOURNAL

Moss and Mushrooms…

Entangled

17 Sep 202010 Sep 2020

The air was heavy and humid As we boarded, shaking the white, fluffy seeds, The bus driver chuckled: If it’s not diesel smoke you’re breathing in it’s the Cottonwood Trees.…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Hunting for Chanterelles Alone

16 Sep 20201 Sep 2020

When I was young I’d run and hidesqueezing beneath a fallen tree in a thicketbeside my house. Face downon a bed of decaying leaves I’d lie quietlyso I could hear…

Moss and Mushrooms…

growth discarded

15 Sep 202010 Sep 2020

Leucocoprinus birnbaumii I went looking for the yardstick to measure bell pepper progress and found an unknown gray growth puzzled intrigued surprised how could I have missed this life spilling…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Shroomzoom Haiku

15 Sep 20207 Sep 2020

Grandmaster Flash now and Zen, spiky-shaped coral doornail dead dreamshades. -Gerard Sarnat Gerard Sarnat MD’s authored HOMELESS CHRONICLES, Disputes, 17s, Melting Ice King. Gerry’s published by Gargoyle, Columbia, Penn, Harvard,…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Photo Series: Fungi

15 Sep 20201 Sep 2020

Tiny Shrooms and Moss Three CapsFungi Photographs by Carolyn Adams Carolyn Adams’ art has been published in Soul by Southwest, Apeiron Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Jenny, and Change Seven…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Ode to Fungi

15 Sep 202010 Sep 2020

Concealed by depth and drought, denied the vital element bestowing breath to their fruit, they emerge once again when elephant clouds fill rivers that spill into floodplains. Bursting a cushion…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Mushrooms

14 Sep 20204 Sep 2020

Leathery, pale yellow chicken-pocked mushrooms big as cupped hands firmly domed on thick Roman stalks strange invaders among the supplicant grasses. I am Alice struck dumb by these fleshy, foreign…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Heavy Night

14 Sep 20201 Sep 2020

Thick clouds of fog grow to enclosesurrounding trees whose leaves sagin the stagnant air and under weightof bats slowly munching on moths.A lone floodlight tries to piercethe fog’s dark veil…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Juniper Haircap

Photo by Lisa Hammond Lisa Hammond is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Lancaster; her poetry and photography are deeply intertwined. Her work has been published…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Philo

13 Sep 20204 Sep 2020

When my mother, a naturalist, tried to grow a moss lawn, she prepared the concrete patio with her own urine. It just seems like I can never get enough, she…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Terraria

13 Sep 20201 Sep 2020

Photograph by Erica Plouffe Lazure Terraria Janissa skipped the aerated charcoal. The most crucial layer of a terrarium and she forgot it. Again. As though the tiny black moisture-sucking, oxygen-supplying…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Radioactive

12 Sep 20204 Sep 2020

Photograph by Cheryl Boyer Cheryl Boyer is a wife, adoptive mom of two amazing children, and author of Counting Colors: a journey through infertility. She often subjects her family to…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Not to be Dismissed

12 Sep 202013 Sep 2020

Open faces smile Thumbelina toadstools stand concave ruffle-tops. Beatrix Potter’s imagination inspired her careful drawings Of shape and color exalted mycology fungi, mosses, spores. But a woman? No! Linnaean society…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Mosshroom

12 Sep 20201 Sep 2020

Photograph by Cathy Fedoruk Cathy Fedoruk ( www.cathyfedoruk.com ) is a mother, traveler, NYU alumna, and beagle-lover. Her work (writing and/or photography) has appeared in Dovetail, KungFuMagazine.com, Montecristo, Passported.com, Pique…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Mushrooms

11 Sep 202011 Sep 2020

Must we point out, bony fingers charging, that Until you’ve entertained us, seeing the future is the same as remembering the past? Until you’ve peered with us, How easily your…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Fairy Ring

11 Sep 202031 Aug 2020

After the heavy summer rains, the magicof the ring might show up. Legend saysnever step into a fairy ring, regardless ofwho had made it, whether elves or witchesin a circle-dance…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Capture the Whispers

11 Sep 202011 Sep 2020

* Italicized lines from Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer, copyright © 2003. Reprinted with permission of Oregon State University Press. Poem by…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Alaskan Amanita

10 Sep 202010 Sep 2020

Photograph by Michelle Stitzlein Michelle Stitzlein is a sculptor who utilizes repurposed materials in her work. In 2018, she travelled to Alaska and Denali National Park as an artist-in-residence with…

Moss and Mushrooms…

A View from Below

10 Sep 202031 Aug 2020

Photograph by Nicole Gonzalez Nicole Gonzalez is a professor of psychology who, in her spare time, enjoys finding the beauty in the details that so often get overlooked -- from…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Patio Decoration

10 Sep 202030 Aug 2020

-Photo/essay by Stuart Terman, M.D. I'm a physician, previously Assistant Clinical Professor/Ophthalmology/Case Western Reserve in my home city of Cleveland, married, and blessed with 4 grown children. I've had publications…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Metamorphosis

9 Sep 20208 Sep 2020

let me be Ovid here — omnia mutantur, nihil interit everything changes,nothing perishes a woodpecker cavities a tree snag and calls it home, a nuthatch climbs in to share a…

Moss and Mushrooms…

The Stinkhorn

9 Sep 202031 Aug 2020

In Ryan’s world, being quiet is relative. He doesn’t talk much––in fact, when he turned three, he ceased to speak at all, which was when his autism was first detected.…

Nature

Mushrooms in Twilight

9 Sep 202030 Aug 2020

Photograph by Tisha Mendes Tisha Mendes, is an avid traveler since her birth and has travelled the world. She has experienced the fury of storms in the Mediterranean, the magnificence…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Moss in the Mountains

8 Sep 20207 Sep 2020

Photo by Joseph S. Pete Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Indiana University graduate and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He was poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat…

Moss and Mushrooms…

The Awakening

8 Sep 202031 Aug 2020

When you search for lifebut see not the vast network.When you seek intelligenceabove where you are standing.When no chemical heals youyet despise foraging in the wild.When you fear the largestand…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Fancy new hat

8 Sep 202030 Aug 2020

Rosé hour in the glen. A circle of anxious squishy women wait. It’s time for my cap fitting. Mother rag skin butter fresh adjusts her white cap adorned with red…

Moss and Mushrooms…

Where the Molly Moochers Grow

Finding morels is like walking through a maze blindfolded, but it can be almost as much fun as eating them. Gnomes of the forest, morels are masters at hiding, but…