In country towns

I search the faces of men: young and old

For familiar reflections
My grandmother never lived long enough to know me

Small brown woman, cheekbones look fist-proof in this sienna photo I carry

Where she once walked these streets in her cheap leather shoes

Flat sensible scraps scrimped together from the war effort
She and I both offspring of one rootless tyrant and many gentle wanderers

(like her fading old people, striding tall from camp to camp,

following the seasons like their old folks did)
Her thin dress swishes over our skinny brown body

She was not a lady who lunched

She made the food, set the tables, and cleared them away

But was never allowed to enjoy the fruits of her labour
Her hunger pains stab into me too
I live inside her, cradled between hipbones

An egg inside another (but Mum absorbs most of the shock so I don’t break)

We guide her true, because

They stole her from her mother being able to
We pull at her belly when she takes a wrong turn,

Talks to bad men and listens to their flattery

Do not deliver us to evil!

We rattle our cages, making her sick
But occupation is nine tenths of the law

He squats her womb with no invitation at all

Working her fingers to the bone

A broken back for stolen wages and a belly full of baby
Later on, when Mum smuggles me out

We go screaming into that good night
But the cheek of this man
Just a cheeky slap, here and there, then:

A fist cracks a cheek and knocks some teeth loose

She’s bleeding pus and pissing blood

Not just her own, but the blood of our ancestors

Clots up in her brain
But a woman’s work is never done

(to wash blood out of cloth: scrub with very cold water before using soap)

Laundry wrung out and hung up like white flags of surrender

Sunlight’s the best disinfectant
For shame
He cleaves her liver with well-placed knee

She bleeds pus and pisses blood for the last
Time
Ain’t nothing like pain to bring you back to the present
As we walk the grand streets of this small country town

I look from face to face for echoes of my face without a mirror

Listening out for whether my blood sings or boils