Bex Hainsworth’s ‘Walnut Street’ is lined with oak trees.No sharp crack of fossilizedbrain tissue, all ridges, like the insideof a rodent’s skull, beneath my feetas I walk to the bus stop at dawn.Instead, cupless acorns bursting, splitting,as furniture becomes firewood.There is a mushroom. It seems to begrowing out of a paving stone,pressing its bare feet against the cold slab,far from soil, leaning wearily against a wall.It is a pound of grimy flesh, an amputated limb.Passed over, like a beggar in a doorway,head bowed beneath his grey-brown cap.Displaced, rootless, lonely, in a landwith a strange name that doesn’t match,from forests and fields to this urban plot.I pause, and mourn for this mushroom:a headstone for all the disinherited of the earth. Meet the Poet Bex Hainsworth (she/her) is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared in Visual Verse, Neologism, Atrium, Acropolis Journal, and Brave Voices Magazine. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex. Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:Like Loading... Published by fragmentedvoices A small, independent press based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and Prague, the Czech Republic View all posts by fragmentedvoices