Becki Hawkes

Hoof Fungus

Not actually living in a horse’s foot
but named for the shape, donkey dark
grey against the pale dead birch

and not exactly beautiful, at least
not at first. But sturdy. Distinctive. A
fungus you will look for again and again

now that you know the name. Look:
here’s another. A whole line of them, jutting
out like the holds on a climbing
wall. Ridged, fleshed

making you shawl the word growths
in your tongue

in these scabbed wet woods, this
lost December light. Everything

you touch is dying today, not dramatically
but listlessly. All mulched out. Only

your hooves keep their shape
in the darkness. A paralysed gallop:
mole plump and resistant

and quietly, quietly alive 

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Becki Hawkes lives in London (United Kingdom). Her first pamphlet, The Naming of Wings, was a winner of the 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize. A Best of the Net nominee, she has had poems published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Rust & Moth, Stone Circle Review, Lunate Fiction and The Madrigal, among others. Instagram: @beckihawkes