After a long, pandemic-induced hiatus, we are very glad to bring you this new issue of The Manchester Review. If the pandemic brought us to a standstill, the machinery of editing and preparing a new issue has suffered from the new pressures of 2022, as additional tasks and work piled in to the week-by-week maintenance […]
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Editorial
After a long, pandemic-induced hiatus, we are very glad to bring you this new issue of The Manchester Review. If the pandemic brought us to a standstill, the machinery of editing and preparing a new issue has suffered from the new pressures of 2022, as additional tasks and work piled in to the week-by-week maintenance […]
3 Poems
Whitby St Hilda’s Priory Six no seven tractors, and two shire horses that trudge over, mistaking me. A polytunnel, a nuns’ cats’ cemetery, and far on the hill above the Esk the Abbey, with the famous steps up to St Mary’s, counting all the way. Caedmon’s there if you think that way mucking out […]
3 Poems
Red Fish The red plastic fish I dig from the garden turning up soil for two new rose bushes is from your water-play, the large white plastic bowl I gave over to your obsession. All day if I let you, you’d stand or squat like some great god over your watery dominion, a sing-song of […]
Gas
Gas The Friday he has your money by doesn’t come. ‘The reports are the reports,’ he says, not answering the phone. He’s a match and every room he enters has been filling steadily with gas. The anniversary passes like a kidney stone which gives him another good idea. The best he’s had for a while. […]
2 Poems
The Following Days The following day there was nowhere to go. Not a café in which to roll your chair up to a window, not a seat in the lounge to watch you read the paper, not a supermarket to let you buy cakes you didn’t eat. The following day there was nothing to […]
3 Poems
One night After Robinson Jeffers I like it when the birds return after a storm: the voice of the first to throw its notes out like a little net across the wet night which is nearly dawn. The storm is not your own but a reflection of other forces. Nevertheless, I lay listening thinking of […]
3 Poems
Adulthood I should have sifted pips packets peel husks crumbs shreds scribbles scum bags boxes dust a fairytale orphan’s task. I should have walked my mess up the lane to meet its monster. Street by street, it slinks to me now, its long clanking calling me out. Once, upon its roar I could close ears […]
3 Poems
New Leaf So much fun with pronouns, But in the end no certainty That any fit. And what if living stopped In the house of optatives, What legacy would be left Beyond the obvious material effects (royal mugs, a green vase of my mother’s, Dad’s flower books)? Every day now I visit My own […]
2 Poems
retablo for an unwelcome advance my legs are paper my hair has flown from my head I’m a frog thrust into boiling water a flamingo-pink motel bursting into the room my army helmet is a salad bowl I […]
2 Poems
To Add Value If only the shtick weren’t so hackneyed, but I go on. As you perhaps already know, I say, one day, rather than doctor, cloud consultant, equity fundamentals data analyst, immunoassay prober, systems mogul, all the dream jobs, everyone realises the only thing worth being is poet. Probably you won’t realise this until […]
2 Poems
Summer Sunk beneath the hot midday, the bay affirms its integrity – some sense of filigreed coherence held fast against the tide. The sky’s unreachable view shifts light from nowheres into orchid and celandine, as form shows itself pristine yet mute to its own meaning. A collie’s sea-shook rainbow sheds inertia onto sand and […]
Cocoa l’Orange
Cocoa l’Orange Like a crouching battalion, the thirty houses in Heatherbell Way nestle along the incline of the mountain. The McEntee’s long landing window is positioned directly opposite the window of the Kearney’s master bedroom, slightly to the left of its en-suite bathroom. Since the first lockdown, Jake Kearney has spent more time […]
Fallen Stock
Fallen stock Tony’s out of the door and jogging across the yard before the trailer’s through the gate, a sheepdog worrying his ankles. A moment later his face is at Ed’s window, a tired moon in the dawn light. They’re up on the top fields. Do you need a hand getting out of the […]
My Husband’s Doing Soup
My Husband’s Doing Soup A cyclist shot by, passing so close to Elizabeth that she felt his Lycra-covered arm brush against hers. She stumbled to the side, almost tripping over her own feet. He didn’t even glance her way. He disappeared into the fog, the steady rattle of his wheels on the metal […]
An Unravelling
An Unravelling Julie turned the corner into her street with a touch of grumpiness about her. It was raining steadily, though it hadn’t been when she left her house half an hour before, which was why she had decided against a coat. Now she was wet, the rain having made short shrift of her […]