Two Poems by Bex Hainsworth

Image by Terry Granger on Unsplash

Hiraeth

It’s been thirteen years since I hung 
up on you, standing in a forest, in the middle 
of the city I was calling home. I’m finally 
getting published in your favourite journal, 
and I wonder if I should send you a copy, 
if you still live at the same address 
I know by heart. But then, I’m not sure 
you would recognise my poems anymore. 

---

Parkin

There is a bakery in the village 
where I grew up which stacks 

slabs of parkin in its window 
every morning. Imperfect rounds

of soft, crumbly cake, bronzed 
like tuppence, but medallion sized. 

Simple heraldry, spiced with ginger 
and nutmeg and cinnamon. 

They smell like an oven, like 
loaves for childhood communion. 

Fourteen years since I first left, 
and Midlands farm shops stock boxes 

of chewy biscuits, pretenders, coppery 
counterfeit. I am syrup-sick with longing, 

with a hunger which brings me home. 

---

Bex Hainsworth is a 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 or is forthcoming in Atrium, The Rialto, Honest Ulsterman, bath magg, and Poetry Wales. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by The Black Cat Poetry Press.