Mercedes Lawry's poem "No Hyperbole" has been paired with Iris van Herpen's "Luminous Lichen" gown from her 2021 "Roots of Rebirth" haute couture collection. Crafted from sustainable Majilite fabric and lustrous mycorrhizal lace, the fungal look features mint-dyed crepe-silk panels, meticulously hand-stitched and pin-hemmed to evoke the branching, thread-like structures of lichen. Juxtaposing the earth's root systems with the sky above, Lawry's poem invites readers to seek answers in the natural landscape amidst a seemingly hopeless world ("Are the lesser saints still praying / or locked in despair?"). The poem's speaker insists that the suffering is anything but hyperbolic, anchoring our bleak reality to the bone-gnawing passing of time: "Click clack. Click clack."
— Paul Cunningham, Editor
No Hyperbole
Are the lesser saints still praying
or locked in despair? Where do you suggest
we go to find hope? Into the sky, beneath
the lichen, in the roots of the white pine?
My secrets no longer matter. Atonal music
ticks through my thoughts which are like
chipped paint, impossible to reconstruct.
Single-minded cells caught in the web
of exaggerated evil. That is to say,
no hyperbole. What was once
perplexing now gnaws at our bones.
Click clack. Click clack.
Mercedes Lawry’s most recent book is Small Measures from ELJ Editions. She’s also published Vestiges from Kelsay Books, three chapbooks and poems in journals such as Nimrod and Alaska Quarterly Review. Additionally, she’s published short fiction as well as stories and poems for children.
