By Peter Hartey
Location: Piccadilly Gardens
on a wooden bench
facing the sun
a man
blind from birth
who can now see
and a man
who could see
but is now blind
sit side by side
and talk.
Peter Hartey co-founded and runs Poetica, a writing forum based in Central Library, Manchester.
By Joseph Alford
Location: Market Street
Gum on the pavements
Film on her teeth
Tight jeans don’t fit
On this stretch of street
Pretension prevention
Saliva is decadence
But if I want to use language
There’s plenty of precedence
Mouth-washed and side-saddled
Youth killed the coronets
With jovial vitriol
Horns don’t fit the dialect
Twee-bees, glass-smashers
Mods, moshers, drones
A sport-socked strip-mine
A place to call home
Joseph Alford is an unemployed polymath-lite. Resident of Levenshulme since 1981. http://rustavenue.blogspot.com/
By Susan Gee
Location: Berwick Avenue, Heaton Mersey
I have always been here. Like the cobbles around the church and the old river that kicks up a stink every summertime. I am part of this place, like a stone that the grass has grown over. This is Heaton Mersey. It is my place. I have always been here.
When I was six I lived on Berwick Avenue. I fed the horse in the field next to my house. He would come to me slowly, bending his head over the wooden fence, towering above me like a big white ghost. I would bring a fresh green apple every day. The horse would bend down and take the apple, with teeth like tombstones. For a moment we would lock eyes.
I could see the horse’s field from my bedroom window. His name was Polo. I’d imagine myself grabbing Polo’s mane and riding around the field. I wanted to fly through the air on his back, to be free.
Now the children are protected like delicate glass and the field is gone. In the place where the horses grazed there are a hundred houses standing erect like soldiers. Guarding their residents from the past, whilst underneath their patios horse prints are embedded in the soil. I do not know who sleeps in that bedroom now, someone else who has no horses to watch.
There are cars everywhere now. Not like when I was young. I would sit on the back of my mum’s black bicycle, wobbling over the bumps on our way to the shops. I’d push my hands through the stripy plastic strips that hung over the door of Duffy’s butchers shop. Mr Duffy the butcher would greet us with a plump smile. There would be a dog behind the wooden slats, salivating. I would watch as Mr Duffy took out his knife, his fat pink hands as red as the meat he was about to cut.
The shop has gone now. They have hair salons and betting shops instead, not even a post office. It is all gone. The orchards filled with pear trees. The Linx golf course where we went sledging before the bulldozers came and transformed it into the Linx housing estate.
By David Keyworth
Location: Sharp Street (off Rochdale Road), Ancoats
She was hiding from Derek’s wife,
Monday night’s Cora, balcony in Salford Quays,
breeze blowing her scarlet negligee.
In her background viewers could see
Manchester’s tallest tower penetrating blue.
Out of my window I could see it too.
Now me and Liz meet in its Cloud 23.
I buy her expensive white wine
and necklaces bearing LM.
She slips them over her plunging neckline.
She wears dark glasses. We keep our backs turned.
She points out the Rovers Return.
Back at my flat we look up at the Tower
with its winking red night-lights.
We guess which footballers might be home.
I put a match to her Benson & Hedges.
We look down at magpies
nesting in the derelict pub’s chimney.
When the builders have gone,
she joins me at the Juliet balcony.
Figures in the flats opposite
look like mute actors behind screens
until some point, some stare,
some signal, some wave.
David Keyworth is part of the Poetica group, which meets fortnightly at Central Library. He has been published in Manchester-based Rain Dog and other magazines. He has always watched Coronation Street but has only gotten to know Manchester in the last few years
By Clare Conlon
Location: Hawthorn Lane, between Chorlton and Stretford
The branches shake themselves,
Like a freshly dipped dog.
A hundred thousand glistening baubles
Shower down and crack open on the ground,
Spilling out a shiny confusion.
Ponds now stand
Where paths once ran;
The river and road course forwards as one.
Puddles hold dark secrets,
Their depths difficult to navigate
In the tunnel of trees.
At the end: bright light.
We emerge, blinking, roused from a dream.
The rain has gone, here comes the sun.
Clare Conlon lives in Chorlton and spends her time writing, editing and drying off in pubs after exploring the rainy city on her trusty Shopper, Celia. http://wordsandfixtures.blogspot.com/
