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 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/
By Steve Hunt
Location: Strangeways
Smoke plumes from the pepperpot
I never noticed that before
I thought they hanged men there
A beacon to warn us of the enemy within
They could not keep the fires burning
As the deadman walked the sooty steps
The hangman would choke
But the smell reminds us
That the Devil waits beneath the trap
And the ascent to the drop
From the highest point here
Conspires with cathedral spire
To scrape the sky
And glimpse the face of a God so near
If only we’d mend our strangeways
Steve Hunt is North Mancunian born and bred. Sometimes he writes, sometimes he reads, sometimes he makes pictures.
By David Stedman
Location: 31 Landcross Road, Fallowfield
Midsummer, 9am,
bristled bees argue
with window glass,
seeking escape,
the first heat of day.
The radio talks on,
too loud, exhaling
the feel-good,
vapid words feathering
across a continuum of
dyed hair, cigarette ends,
dog barks, tabloid screeds,
grass-cool alleyways.
Buried in the back streets,
history matures in
rubber-mouthed jars, dusted,
derelict, boiling with ants,
mouldering flowers,
and down this path you disappear,
seeking to feel without
the complication of thought.
David Stedman studied English language and literature at the University of Manchester and enjoys every return visit to the city
