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This Is What It Feels Like


a stranger in familiar land     
                                          my blood
too sings from the cracks 
of cobbled streets 

i can count paces 
between the old and new 
 
i felt it within delicate configurations :

carvings and photographs,
ceramic figurines dipped in resin
my Mama’d collected,      
                                    passing

down like water in a slow stream     
tipped in gravity
                             like me
 
i heard a song and let it carry me

felt a pull outside the scenes
of my fatherland     

                            a daughter meant to leave

said my impassive stars,
if actions were to mean anything

but what does meaning look like? 
everything looks the same here 
                                                  but older 

i hang the washing, walk 
to the shop for eggs and cheese 
and when i go back
                                  i fall right in-

to all the same places
(only I’m driving)

but ‘nothing’s too far away 
these days’ i tell my sister 
and my friends,
                             sipping

beer as good as Texas 
on a Tuesday in the west end
                                                 dripping

with irony 
and maybe even satisfaction

Copyright © Erin Beckett

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