November 2016: poetry pRO Visit to Bucharest is featured in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 17… buy, UK outside UK
and see 6 British Poets in Bucharest and Series – bilingual collections

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featured poet, Valerie Bridge

Borrowing

Mother says we lisp,
but we don’t think so,
we can say, black soap
white soap, weasel.

She says mediterrinain:
we say the same, at school.
They turn to laugh at us,
we smile back; change,

keep a voice for home:
it belongs with Schnitzel,
rye bread, Knödel.
Friends read Heidi.

How could we have said, mother
adopted that name: Jadviga Rosina,
was stamped on her papers,
behind five metre wired barbs?

We weren’t told. Didn’t invite friends back,
shielded accent, rage; invented goats.
She said, I am always twenty-one,
if anyone wants to know.

We did not ask her to
explain: she’d only have said,
I told you already, I borrowed
you an English surname.

November 2016: poetry pRO Visit to Bucharest is featured in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 17… buy, UK outside UK and see 6 British Poets in Bucharest and Series – bilingual collections