Phantasmagoria
We brewed the tea from stalky & skeletal
mushrooms, chalk-hued & musty smelling.
Ground to dust, & swollen with water,
the end result looked a lot like rot.
Can you believe that? We swallowed
rot & our eyes shot light.
The apartment filled from floor to ceiling
with individual crystalline whorls. I reached
out & turned worlds on their heads.
Even trauma kaleidoscoped.
The bathroom shone, opalescent.
White walls glowed, streaked with light
pink & lavender pastels of iridescence.
I was sitting inside of a pearl,
a moon, a lifetime.
I was a glimmer in the depths of existence,
curled against the cool & mothering
floor. I was just a wonder—another bioluminescent
bizarre eccentricity where words beauty
& monster were never born
without the invention
of the mirror or the intrusion of man.
Camille Ferguson lives in and loves Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Cleveland State University where she received the Neal Chandler Creative Writing Enhancement Award. Her work is published or forthcoming in Rabid Oak, Madcap Review, Drunk Monkeys, and Okay Donkey, among others.