Kate Caoimhe Arthur

In the Gunpowder Shed

In the Gunpowder Shed In January 2022 a new species of fungus was identified at WWT Castle Espie At first it was no more than a descent of fine mist, a shiver that settled, like dew, on the battement tendu of the cellar spider that porcelain arachnid; Art-Deco, climbed, in time, into slippery joints; unctuous cavelets under exo- skeleton shield. A complex: vulnerable to persuasion of the psychedelic kind, or perhaps amphetamine, it anoints its mycelial threads in the blood’s rich juice. And maybe the brittle spider never knew before such a rush of unutterable joy, such lust, such clarity: as the spores tingled through the abdomen, reaching to the tips of the legs & coursing through the brain in its life up to this point, in the warm dark of the gunpowder shed, as it climbs to the highest corner. And when the toxins numb it, perhaps it is a relief to give over all your liquid, and be a dry husk and finally to spore into a ghost tree so unlike the body you knew. Kate Caoimhe Arthur Published in Stinging Fly Issue 47, Volume 2: Winter 2022-23 as ‘Entomopathogenic Fungus’