Issue 20
Chad Campbell

Editorial

A new season, a new issue of The Manchester Review, and this year a new editor. Which, as it turns out, is me. I’ve had some big shoes to fill. Lucy Burns, the review’s last co-editor, left to complete her PhD and John McAuliffe, the review’s head editor, will be on leave until this August. […]

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D.A. Powell

Five Poems

Raw Papers ask the trees what to write they’ll tell you the trees ask a kid and he’ll tell you how it sucks to be young then folks swing on you just swing on you and you break

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Deborah Mantle

Lost and Found

          Millions of people passed through the stations of Greater Tokyo every day. In the to and fro of daily life, it wasn’t surprising that things got lost. And when a person noticed they’d misplaced something belonging to them, they would, logically, head to the Lost and Found Office.           Genichi Ogawa worked in the Lost and […]

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James Galvin

Two Poems

POEM WITH NOTHING IN IT   In this poem everything happens at once And keeps on happening. Want a second opinion? Sorry. It’s the eternal present, Only here, in your world.  Not much fun, is it? All present moments are freaked By moments past, And by implication, therefore, The ghosts of moments future. Comeuppance comes […]

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Justin Wymer

Three Poems

FACE In one language at least it sounds like “rooster.” And before seeing the day I see crescents swaying under, and someone’s face clear in them, a dense flush of pink, and then a wind again, it goes under. I fell in love with the taut skin of the café chain-smoker. He had a trimmed […]

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Annie Fan

Three Poems

MANET ET OLYMPIA She is looking and knows the pose, the drift of eye through skin. Her orchid falls. He paints its mouth, full of sex and rust, soured from being kept in water. A few knots of gold, her hair opaque, a muted sound. The maid knows these things: gardens rushing from living to […]

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Michael Prior

Two Poems

LIGHT AND YEARS I remember how she rewound the VHS each time I pleaded to see the Falcon sail free from a dead star’s fiery pointillism. Or, how he leaned back, answered, We waited for it to end, when I asked, What did you do in the camp? Years later, it’s difficult to say who […]

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Justin Quinn

Two Poems

Skøg Urban Hub Elegy                               i.m. Ivan Blatný While outside spring is warming up the land, you’re sitting here with me in this café, a little chilly, as you’ve slept in clay so long, a little tremor in the hand, but otherwise you’re fine as you take in the place you left some eighty years ago. […]

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Gerard Smyth

Two Poems

A NEW DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD The weather girl warned us of the weather to come but we could not imagine it: black crows like emissaries of a missionary church shaking the rain from their black hoods. Soon the sea walls were taking their punishment and the one road leading somewhere was losing ground to […]

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Caitlin Roach

Plea

Plea How when a body dies it becomes the body. No mind to all the mouths who named it, who knew it in quiet, who call for it now, unanswered. But know it: bear the cells’ leaking out and pooling where they’re pulled to, bluebottles lapping at these final outputs, fur around their mouths bloodied […]

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Adam Tavel

Cain

Cain the truth is that I never loved the land this dirt communion my father’s blackened fingernails desperate cupping blossoms his lips babbled out of names each day he tracks the sun and like a blind runt loses himself winced shivering sore hands twitching broth to his mouth in firelight given to wrinkles mother a […]

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Paula Bohince

Three Poems

Late Summer Lament When feeling turns, finally, into burden there is shame and a moment known in human terms as letting go. This happens often in late summer in a smoky clearing, bee-cloud brooding gilded lace beside a tent. In the end, a sleeping man can blend into a hare softening in the briar, soon […]

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Joan Colby

Two Poems

A Woman Like Me The woman who sits in the square handing out oranges Is the woman who combs the hair of Jesus In the Basilica. The woman I would be If I were not selfish and an unbeliever. This woman arranges gladiolas on the altar For every funeral. She is happy to think Of […]

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Tim Craven

Dusk

DUSK so we choose to remember some earlier version when you were ablaze and caught red-handed stretched and striving collecting all you thought you were owed or further back before the cognac glow and the inexplicable temper before the new claws of winter began to show themselves and before the pale creep of dusk which […]

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Jesse Falzoi

The Good People from the West

The Wall had been down for three years when I first talked to somebody from the former GDR, not in Germany but in the community room of a hostel in Truckee, where I was waiting for a phone call from the police. My rental car had been stolen – and with it, my money, passport, […]

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James Heath

The Fashion Fit

Ray felt a hand on his shoulder and looked behind him.           ‘What are you drinking?’ asked Mr. Hudson.           ‘I just had a coffee while I was waiting.’           Mr. Hudson addressed the barman. ‘Sim, another coffee. Large Scotch for me.’ He turned and headed over to a table without inviting Ray to follow. Ray took his […]

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Tom Jenks

Rhubarb

Stanley is up early cutting the rhubarb. He uses the heavy knife with the weathered handle. He curses when a stalk is stubborn, or the knife cuts his thumb instead of the rhubarb. He invokes our saviour and all the saints. He puts the rhubarb in the big pan with the lost lid. Some is […]

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Éamon Little

Upon the River’s Bank Serene

Upon the river’s bank serene, a fisher sat where all was green and looked it. He saw, when light was growing dim, a fish – or else the fish saw him – and hooked it. He took, with high erected comb, the fish – or else the story – home and cooked it. Recording angels […]

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Ely Percy

Witch

Thir’s this new lassie in oor Regi class an she’s a pure mad gothic chick. Her name’s Frieda but she likes gettin cawed Friday, an she’s always wearin black eye liner an bright white foundation an a big mad leather trenchcoat.           Aw the folk in oor class are sayin she looks lik a witch. She […]

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Natalie Crick

Two Poems

I See You It has been a meatless season and a muted harvest. Dead fruit warps from the trees. We watch it like something forbidden. The bald mice I found in the cellar this morning linger like grease smears even after Sister drew the dead things out. Absence in this house is curdled in sour […]

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