Helen Dring
My great-grandmother is looking for the men behind the television, she
tells me that they shout to her at night and my grandmother has her
hands in puddings that no one will eat and we are all touched
with the witch, my mother says with her eyes rolled to the heavens
my great grandmother tells us there is a little girl sitting on her bedside and the
women I want to become look at each other
my great-grandmother came on a boat with nothing but sea salt in her hair
and when the man at the docks asked her name she told him the wrong one
so really what happened was
my great-grandmother came on a boat with nothing but sea salt in her hair
and disappeared to take another man’s name
so when she sees the girl from Clare sitting on her bed does she wonder how she found her
in another man’s house how she knew that she was nearly ready
it’s always a sister that calls you back
my mother tells me, years later, when she is gone.
I ask what happens if there are no sisters and she says
she’s never thought to ask.
Helen Dring is a poet and PhD student in education from Manchester, UK. Her work looks at family, illness and feminism. She lives with her wife and a small menagerie of grey animals.
Liminal Transit Review 