Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries [Content trigger warning: abortion, medical procedure detail] Can you not feel anything in your body? This is the question a friend asks, sitting across from me in a low-lit cinema bar on the corner of Niederbarnimstraße, in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district. Half-drunk glasses of beer stand between our elbows. […]
Issue 28
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Saxifrage Our ten-year-old feet running along the drystone wallbetween our houses, the saxifrageslumped so thick over the bubbling stone, we didn’tknow there was a gap betweenmy garden wall and hers. Did we everrecognise a certain lack of solidityas we hammocked across the gapbetween her and me? Rockbreakers […]
Comfort Me with Violins
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries After I gave birth, the world became sleepless. We spent a year lost in an exhaustion so deep it split my brain. I saw rainbows refracted in the kitchen’s french doors, opening out to the yard glistening under the soft morning light. My eyelids twitched. My body swayed […]
And the Radio Plays
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Ahead of them, the road lays out broad and straight. Tulips on the embankment are holding strong; clouds high and stratus smeared. Jack is driving, as he always drives, because Mary’s migraines are rare but unpredictable, and because Jack, they both know, has problems ceding control. He is […]
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Toad Tide Waking from winter-deep half sleep to acheand seep and sap, you stir in the ooze,heave your tender bulk from mud to air,begin the heavy-limbed creep to the watersof your making, weeping soft poison to ward youon your way. Risking rat and road and raptor,you find […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries A Competition Buzzard over crow, buthooded crow over raven. Salmonthrashing on a hook and leaderover sugar in the evening. Winterbranches scribbled on the sundownlike witches’ fingers overthin silk leaves of bible paper.Corroded silver forks, I think—never sold, just given—overlate-night radio, coruscant streets.Silence over apology untilwe insisted on […]
Stuck in the Middle
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries “Applying for a visa extension?” the man behind the plexiglass in the Holborn post office asks you. “Yes,” you say, slightly out of breath, clutching a crumpled letter from the Home Office. Your stomach had started churning as soon as you saw it this morning and you had […]
The Curse
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries [Content warning: descriptions of illness, blood] I had been bleeding for twelve days when I picked up the scent of the Ally Pally Witch. This time she was lurking in an audio clip from the Open University’s digital archives[i]. Robert Rowland, a former head of production at the […]
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries bee me up talk to me about tender.are you blue from slender.are you bruised from under.or are you billowing bright.were you green this morning.or are you new to this leafing.hell bent. on sky filling.are you made of light.is this rain again.or a recent memory.and is this density.this […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Cloaca Maxima God bless the modern malefactors,for fellow travellers praise be God,bless boldness, bless servility. We used to sweeten cities, drainingbeneath the polity, expelling refuseto oblivious seas and barbarous lands. Death and dirt and inconveniencewere flushed to cleanse our rituals. Sometimeswe showed the process off, sanitised and […]
Incident at the Castle
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries [Content trigger warning: suicide] There was an incident at the castle. Someone fell from the walls. Or jumped or was pushed. Jason says we must have a look. It will be so much fun. When we get there, there’s already a cordon of blue ticker tape and a […]
Windwatt
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Windwatt Tide wrack windsthrough clotted estuary mud,mud so thick it stops the breath,but gives life to riverine shell-creatures,and makes mudflats blossom with detritus, estuarine silt flowers;clay-born and half-formed things. Taf-torn, river wrought,the Landsker Line* splitsmore than language; even this island town, from which castlesslide into swamps, leveesdissolve […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries My first white chest hair My dentist told me I lack wisdomteeth while filling my root canal cavity.His slender three-eyed metal swan shonelight on my every misdeed. I had ignoredmy body, as if it was mine onlyon a monthly subscription. Free repairs,as long as I kept paying […]
Mating Habits
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries While Louie fumbles with his zip, I lay a newspaper down on the floor of the Wendy House. I can’t help but think about next week’s presentation while he does it: a conference paper on the mating habits of waterbirds in the Bering Sea, specifically their fidelity to […]
Damilola
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Damilola with eyes the colour of sepsis, Damilola with surname like a hieroglyph no one can decipher, Damilola with underwear on back-to-front dawns on his knees begging for virtue, naps upright from Clapham to Charing Cross, thumbs the biblethick in-tray, laughs almost. Damilola wonders whether Mrs O’Donoghue will […]
Issue 28: Editorial
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Issue 28 of The Manchester Review presents works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from writers across the globe, gathering together pieces of disparate tones, forms and thematic focuses. These texts span across those that masterfully employ more familiar structures, to those that explore experimental styles, evidencing both the […]