On the Texture of Mushrooms

You say I’m odd for not liking them

on that basis. I say they remind me

of grey days like this, when the earth

is slick with puddles, a universal sheen

of nose-scrunching that makes it all

so bitter tasting.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ll wade through sludge

if I must, but I’m not pretending to

enjoy it for your sake. Make a risotto

out of literally anything else, make a world

whether the cracks and edges aren’t ignored,

why don’t you?

When the alien gloss is off my tongue

I experience a feeling comparable to when

this misery town becomes just a town,

one I want to take you around and

argue about mushrooms, when we dare

to blast it and us with cracking, thinking, wound-licking blue.

Charlie Bowden is a 21-year-old student from Hampshire, England, who discovered a love for writing poetry in lockdown after spending years studying it at school. His work has been included in collections by The Mays, Black Cat Poetry Press and the Stratford Literary Festival among others and he won the 2021 Forward Creative Critics Competition. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @charliebpoetry for more.