By Christina Stenhoff
Location: Blenheim Avenue, Whalley Range
This poem was a finalist in our Rainy City Love Stories competition
Every morning the grasses weep
and chant your royal name.
Foretold perhaps in the frenzy of
your midday, honey-drunk dance, yet
all afternoon I searched the
entire scorching garden for a trace.
The orchids gave nothing away.
I should have known as much.
I wanted to cry, but my face was hot,
tight, unrelenting, a dumb mask.
I returned to the broodless hive
and it was then that I knew.
We’d watched the whole colony
collapse around our feet.
Then we flew, triple speed, to other hives,
found nothing, no-one.
The cells, empty alveoli of a dead lung.
We remembered our purpose.
I shuddered inside of you
feeling the weight of creation upon us.
Our bodies taught, tessellate.
Your hum, a Vedic hymn; I miss it.
Christina Stenhoff is in the final year of a creative writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University.
By Claire Massey
Location: Clyde Road, West Didsbury
This story was a finalist for the Rainy City Love Stories Competition
I like sitting in her toilet, she keeps it clean.
I can feel her singing in the shower from here. Beautiful voice.
She always keeps the toilet lid down. She doesn’t know I’m here.
I met her at a barbecue in the summer, Mouseman was handing me round, everyone wanted a squeeze but the way she touched me was different, so gentle. I had a little lick. I knew she was the one.
When Mouseman got kicked out of the flats I decided to stay and find her. I didn’t know which number she lived in so I worked my way up and down the pipes. It was a process of elimination. I knew she wouldn’t put fags out in her toilet. Or leave it full of crap.
The rats have kept me going, when things have gotten dark. That and imagining her touch again.
I only ventured out of the building’s pipes once. I had the munchies. I couldn’t resist a quick trip to Kwik Save. I worked my way through two packs of assorted chicken pieces. Couldn’t stay away for long though, had to get back to be close to her.
Since I found her, Flat 4, I’ve sat here most days, planning how to show myself, imagining her reaction, going over it again and again. Will she take me in her arms? Will she kiss me?
Tonight I felt a male voice in the bathroom. He lifted the lid in the dark. Threw his old skin in at me. She’s found someone else. My life is over.
I should have bitten him.
I’ve led in the pipes for weeks now, not moving, not eating. I should have shown myself sooner. She could have been mine.
I swam through shit for her and this is the thanks I get. She’s abandoned me.
I should have bitten her.
I give up, I’ve given myself up. I’m stretched out on the floor, waiting for the lad in number 3 to find me. I want them to lock me up. She’s broken my heart, there’s nothing left for me here now.
*** Keith the snake was captured in a block of flats on Clyde Road, West Didsbury in October 2005. He was thought to have been abandoned by a previous tenant who had been evicted for rent arrears in August 2005. A spokesman for Greater Manchester Fire Service said: ‘An occupier of a flat found the snake in his bathroom, placed a plastic bin on its side and the snake called Keith climbed in. A lid was placed on the bin and it was handed over to the RSPCA.’ ***
Claire Massey lived in West Didsbury for two happy years in a tiny and ridiculously expensive bedsit with no central heating and a noisy nutter next door. She usually writes fairy tales and stories for children and is the founder and editor of the online magazine New Fairy Tales – www.newfairytales.co.uk
By Rachel Mann
Location: Ivylea Road, Burnage
This poem was a finalist in our Rainy City Love Stories competition
All September dad was full of the sly white cat
that flowed like mercury up our yard
to cry for chunks of supper at the kitchen door.
On Sundays we’d drool as he carved
moist white sides of chicken
the prize, the hope, the dream of our week
only to ease crispy skin, the glorious slivers
onto a saucer for the beast to sniff
guard and gobble as we watched
mutinous over our tough and greasy fare.
On weekdays mum scowled as dad left half his plate
(complaining of bilious gripe or a just too hefty dinner)
and slid liver and onions onto the creature’s patch with a caress.
Come October dad had moved on:
curtains wanted closing, the fire demanded a poke
and rheumatism was dribbling down his back like damp;
the calm of staring at the ripple of fur coiled on its step
stood no chance against crackling coals,
The Navy Lark and a comfy chair.
But the cat refused to let go.
After tea for days its mewing pierced mum’s ears
until she’d wince like she’d bit tin foil
wring her dish cloth like a chicken’s neck
and I’d hiss and shu and stare
the yellow eyes into retreat.
Now our yard is nothing more than its place for pissing
or launching flight onto the neighbour’s fence, the exotic beyond.
I saw it once, as still as a gunman composed for the kill,
ready to tear a vole. The prey – its gift – was presented
at someone else’s door.
Rachel Mann is the vicar of St Nicholas Church, Burnage.
By Annabel Wigoder
Location: Starbucks, Deansgate
This story was a finalist for our Rainy City Love Stories competition
Michael’s new girlfriend went by the name of Wonder Woman. She was a freckly Londoner who worked in Starbucks, and the first of Michael’s girlfriends to let him have full-blown penetrative sex.
Michael was queuing for coffee when he caught her eye over the counter. Two Japanese businessmen turned and glared as she beckoned him to the front, and a large American talking into a headset pretended not to realise he was blocking the way.
‘Sorry,’ said Michael. ‘Coming through!’ He squeezed to the front of the queue and had to stand sideways between a pushchair and a woman with two dogs who refused to make room for him. Michael manoeuvred an elbow on to the counter.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Thanks! Can I get, uh, one medium coffee to go?’
‘Sugar?’ asked Wonder Woman. She scrawled something on a paper cup and passed it to the man at the hot drinks machine. Then she leant forward and said something to Michael that he couldn’t hear over the noise of the milk steamer.
‘Sorry,’ said Michael. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
‘I said you look a bit like Bruce Wayne.’ It wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting.
‘Bruce Wayne?’
‘Yeah.’
‘As in Batman?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Crime-fighter, billionaire, international playboy?’
Wonder Woman checked over her shoulder and indicated that Michael should come closer. She undid the top two buttons of her shirt.
‘I get off at six,’ she murmured. Wonder Woman was wearing something under her Starbucks apron that glittered red and gold in the lights.
‘Meet me outside,’ she told him, re-doing her shirt with the fingers of one hand. ‘Mr Wayne.’ Then she turned to the rest of the queue and shouted: ‘OK! Who’s next?’
The woman with two dogs shouldered Michael out of the way. He bent down to pat the smaller dog and let it lick his fingers. It was 9.32am. Michael picked up his coffee, went to work, and spent the day researching Batman on the internet.
By David Griffiths
Location: Hare and Hounds pub, Shudehill
The Northern Rail rattler to Stalyvegas is late again and I’m early, so I decide to squeeze in a swifty at the Hare and Hounds.
I’m ordering a Holts at the bar when I notice this old fella staring at me. No change there – I’ve got one of those faces. People think I’m someone else, people think they recognise me.
But the funny thing is, I think I recognise him. He’s about six foot, with slicked black hair. His eyebrows and sideburns are grey and out-of-control like shabby Brillo pads. He appears to be smartly dressed, but when I look closer his suit is far too big for him – you could shoplift turkeys in it.
He lurches over from the other side of the pub as if we’re on the Good Ship Venus in a Force 10, his eyes fixed on mine. Is he pal of my dad’s? An old workmate gone to seed?
I try to catch the barmaid’s eye for an early warning nutter alert but she’s giving nothing away.
He stands next to me, reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper.
‘Do you know the actors who played the Magnificent Seven?’ he asks me in an accent that appears to be both Manc and German.
I’m thrilled. I’ve been waiting for this. Ever since I lost a pub quiz tie-breaker on this very question, I’ve been dying to answer it again – in a pub quiz, on a quiz machine, even from an old fella with a piece of paper.
He says, ‘I’ve been going round the pubs asking everyone this question for the past few weeks. Everyone’s got involved.’
Quiz me daddio, quiz me. Yes, he may be drunk, he may be a nutter, but this is just what I need when I’m trying to get the buzz of work out of my head. Quiz me daddio!
