The Liberties, a poem by Caroline Bracken

I. Then

Sunday mornings whooshing through vacant streets named after dead men;
Foley, Brabazon, Pleasants. Singing Dublin can be heaven,
Dad steering our green Hillman Imp and leading the chorus.
We enter his world, Woolworths, he is the boss here too,
his office a mystery of files, adding machines, typewriters
silent in the darkness of their day off.
My sister and I are shopkeepers for an hour
take turns filling brown-paper bags with pick-and-mix,

fizzle-sticks, gob-stoppers, kola-kubes, clove-drops,
our tills ringing louder than the bells of Christchurch,

pushing bug-eyed baby dolls in unsold buggies
we are customers, haggling over prices like Liberties women.

II. Now

I meet Dad for lunch in Mannings, across from the dole office
where Woolies once stood. A black mare saunters past
bridle jangling in time to the tune in my head;
There's no need to worry, there's no need to hurry,
her carriage laden with tourists taking shots of the locals
to post on Instagram for the folks back home.
We walk up Thomas Street, stalls stacked with fake track-suits
and out-of-date chocolate. A trader catches my eye,
thinks she has me, with my southside accent,
Ugg boots only forty euro. Dad laughs
You won't fool this one Missus, she'd buy and sell you.
The hop-scented air is still the same.

Airport Mother

You will know her by her lack of baggage;
her heart is her suitcase, packed to bursting
with baby booties, night-feeds,
last-one-in-the-shop dolls, pizza parties,
hours, no, years in cars
outside schools, stables, ballet classes,
basketball matches. She carries the corpses
of Roborovski hamsters, angelfish, kittens;
they squish into spaces between bitchy
best friends, 2am nightclub pick-ups,
fracture clinics, degree courses, graduation ceremonies,
job-bridge internships, minimum wage labours,
The-One findings, visa applications, plane tickets,
departure halls.

Caroline Bracken won the iYeats Poetry Competition 2015 and the Writing.ie/ Anam Cara Poetry Competition 2013. She was recently selected by Words Ireland as a candidate on its mentoring programme for poets working towards a first collection.