By Nick Hancill
Location: Exchange Square, Manchester
Three a.m., the far corner; she fumbles around
while the taxi’s engine hacks and coughs:
A standstill beneath the Co-operative Bank.
Her fingers hunt the deer-hide purse
and part the supple skin at the fold.
A slurred explanation mumbled to her chest
and she’s out of the cab that sits on the curb,
tilted to one side and eyes glazed over.
A man asleep against the hole-in-the-wall,
his hand still open, palm to the clouds.
She prods in her pin, drops her make-up,
the man’s eyes open, off-white as his paper cup.
But he’s used to this kind and disturbance.
The heels drown him out as they clatter home,
he sees the cab driver mouth his thoughts.
‘Sorry love, all I’ve got is change.’
Nick Hancill is a young poet, based in Manchester but originally from the North East. He’s currently studying creative writing on the University of Manchester’s MA programme.
By John Togher
Location: Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
I meet you
at the statue
on the hour
and think of
the drowning grip
I have on your face.
Your onion seed
eyes are ablaze.
I sigh, watch
the feathered clouds
disconnect above us.
You give a tug
on my sleeve,
“We’re a clumsy version
of a good idea,
like pterodactyls.”
I freeze-frame,
see you entwined
in bringing defeat,
deaf to my melancholy.
I stare at the chip
in your front tooth.
John says: ’28 years old. I am literature co-ordinator of the NXNW Festival. Editor of The Mental Virus Arts Magazine. Been writing for seven years. Published here and there.’
By Steve Hunt
Location: St Mary’s Church, Moston
Last night I pissed
Where Cromwell’s feet
Once stood
As he prepared to mount
His mare
Or stud
T’was St Mary’s Church
On St Mary’s Road
Near Nuthurst Park
Off Lightbowne Road
You know the one
With the blue neon cross?
Like the one with the red one
At Brent Cross?
I walked through
The churchyard
Down Memory Lane
On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep
And back again
And remembered the time
When we fell in love..
It was just a song on Radio 1
Played by DJ Alan ‘Fluff’
Freeman
Like the free man
Who pissed on the stair
Where Oliver Cromwell
Mounted his mare
And polished the brass plate
On which it state
Here stood the man
Only four foot eight.
Steve Hunt is North Mancunian born and bred. Sometimes writes, sometimes reads, sometimes makes pictures.
By Charlotte Gringras
(After John Betjeman)
Location: Altrincham Metrolink station
The metrolink from leafy Chesh.to Piccadilly
rumbles and shunts its way straight to the city,
passing through pretty unappealing places,
where wide-eyed children dream of open spaces.
The towpath by the canal with the odd canoe
skirts gardens, ducks or swans and barges too,
giving promise of beauty with reeds and hedges-
tram windows show rubbish strewn at its edges.
We go on past graveyards, scrap yards, back yards,
dissecting piles of waste everyone discards,
water parks, play parks, car parks stretch for miles,
screened by vandal-proof metal grilles or broken tiles.
Rows of mirror-image houses obediently planted
behind lawns and bedding, now sit disenchanted
by budding conservatories growing out of the wall
once far better used in a kids’ game of football.
Suddenly, there – behold – the ‘dreaming spires’
of Man. U’s ground, the place that still inspires
the hopeless with hopes of playing the game
that brings the chosen few a moment of fame.
Nearly in the metropolis now, where apartments
for yuppies and massive corporate departments
grow higher and higher – in stature and price –
with an awful urban view they never think twice
about. How will they feel looking out at streets,
stuck up in their million ‘k’ penthouse suites,
staring simply at a grey cityscape, a stone’s throw
from the Bridgewater canal and the Metro below.
Charlotte Gringras says: ‘Been a hobby poet for a few years, deeply embedded in Manchester and its regions, had a few poems published, enough to keep me compelled to write. Always fancied trying a Betjeman lookalike.’
By Lauren Bolger
Location: Tib Street
Where the suited and booted see pigeons day to day
Roundabouts, the vultures’ playground of retail foreplay
Cast-offs of a half up half down hacienda
Dancing on stage, the dark atmospherics all coloured in
Jade and jaded the thoughts of the big-time bouncer
The drug infused frame who will have us over
To the friend who sits facing with spunk in her hair slathering verbs terms
Pulling the pronoun round Tib Street showing it parkas with detachable fur
At night something bold occurs on the blackout beat
Filled with ejaculations, cobwebs, piss and bleach
Damp, damp is my pocket and damp is the earth where I fell upon it
To a chorus of mist, to a crescendo of sex on parachutes kissed
Humming, shaken where the lighters speak sonnets
In solace my pavement where I fell upon it
Lauren Bolger, 20, is Mancunian and studies English and creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has performed this poem onstage at The Deaf Institute and it is part of a collection she has been working on in preparation for her final dissertation piece.
