we were the French Family on St Margaret’s Road, 
mum a ’50s postwar bride, a stranger on the shore. 

the onion man knew to come to us, number 132, 
onions & garlic braided like my sister’s plaits, looped 

on his handlebars, beret at a jaunt, unafraid of cliché, 
a Gauloises drooping from his lips. we would hear him 

before we saw him, spokes creaking over the tyre-crunch. 
ail, ail, he would chant. too young to understand, we thought 

he was in pain, aïe, aïe. the pain of the wanderer, weeping 
from scored onions, eyes stinging, said my mother, 

from exile. she filled her apron with the bulbs 
& cloves of home. they hung in the kitchen for weeks. 

Bio: Phil Powrie