The Forest of Questions, by F. J. Bergmann

Mescaline Woods, by Gage Taylor (USA) 1969

The Forest of Questions

some rocks seemed blue as sky
but this rainless sky was bluer
the clouds swooped happily
unladen with intimations
a few shadows glowered
on the flowing golden paths
someone who was not a gardener
wandering plausibly among trees
florescent as baroque fountains
expanding in dissimilar color
suspicious that not one had a mate
implied by the absence of seeds
the dead trunks twirled upward
like lightning doing handstands
upon examining the inanimate
perhaps not all of them random
some of them were once human
a mossy rock that had been a man
pale stump that had been a woman
frequent tree skeletons signaled
unequivocal evidence of malice
amid the deceptive flowering

F.J. Bergmann

F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com), and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. She has competed at National Poetry Slam as a member of the Madison, WI, Urban Spoken Word team. Her work appears irregularly in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov's SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. Her dystopian collection of first-contact expedition reports, A Catalogue of the Further Suns, won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest and the 2018 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award.