Image: © Charles Eastwood Ya Shaykh Heaven Hough End Fields, Manchester, 2020 here, every blade of grass,every bluetit and blackbird,grasshopper and tiny ant,the creeping thistle in summer the gorse bush and the hairy willowherb,fireweed and curled wood;the corn chamomile, the calming tea,the hailed herb chicory all are in constant […]
Issue 29
Snowfall
Claire was late to pick up her children from nursery. She worked on the tenth floor of a tall glass building in London Bridge and had watched the snow fall against the cold December sky, delicately at first, then thickly, flakes spinning, candyfloss white. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she’d said to her team when […]
Origami
Image: © Charles Eastwood Fold the paper in half vertically, unfold it, fold the paper in half horizontally, unfold again. You were sixteen and drunk off the cheapest corner-shop vodka. You let ugly boys kiss you if they were nice enough, or if they looked your way at back garden parties. He noticed […]
if you close the door, the night could last forever
Image: © Charles Eastwood the sun rises over julia’s balcony streaming from the east, honey & lemons from the west where empty plant-pots sing for geraniums strong enough to survive the spanish summer julia’s eyes are gentled by soft blue morning light it’s stasis printed on the surface of passing […]
The Red Notebook
dImage: © Charles Eastwood One undistinguished weekday, she adds, on impulse, a spiral-bound red notebook to her online shopping delivery. Days later, amid the frugality of a set of ingredients for meals for one – a single aubergine, a small sachet of chow mein sauce, a shrink-wrapped half-cucumber – it arrives. She rests her […]
Tourism
Image: © Charles Eastwood For thirty American dollars you gain entrance to the art museum. You walk through a metal detector and fear it will beep. You imagine if it did beep, how everyone would look at you, with full attention, in tension, and how your skin would vibrate. You would reach into your […]
2 poems
Image: © Charles Eastwood postcard from atta, guyana my mother’s footprints The tales she’d tell exotic morpho mother I chase them in East Street as I search for her home find only scrubland look for clues at Kitty all trace washed away of her swims in muddy seas further on […]
Throw the Stone Down the Mountain
Image: © Charles Eastwood My dad’s got a gold tooth. My dad’s got a broken nose. My dad can do a hane goshi on you. I boasted about him, trying to extend his protection to the playground. ‘What’s a hanny goshy?’ asked the boys who picked on me. We didn’t have a TV and […]
Luca
Image: © Charles Eastwood It had been a long time since anyone in Luca’s village had seen a star. When the companies had decided to take the night sky for themselves, there was little anyone could do to stop them – and when the darkness had spilled over the sky, like oil, concealing everything […]
…for all the days of her life
Image: © Charles Eastwood She hadn’t looked for it in a long time but there it is, just as she knew it would be. Underneath her winter coat that was too tattered now to keep her warm, atop her worn out boots, which likewise had lost their ability to keep her feet warm, was […]
The Handover
Image: © Charles Eastwood i.m. Fada Mohammad Years ago, on a long-haul to Singapore, Kabul appeared on the seat-back locator map tracking our flight path: below us was a place where war never dies, but at 12,000 meters the window held only the pale brown creases and folds of The Hindu Kush. […]
My Great Grandfather’s Apron Shop
Image: © Charles Eastwood Salt, parsley, matzah I am tying my apron when he wanders in. He must be impressed, my elter zeyde, because instead of moving on again, he sits as if inviting me to make him coffee; I pull tight on my apron strings, imagine his approval, his apron shop, its […]
The Eid Dinner
Image: © Charles Eastwood On 19 March 2003, US and British forces invaded Iraq; by May the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba had become a permanent facility housing over 680 prisoners. In Europe, a devastating heatwave caused over 30,000 deaths that summer. The year also saw the launch of Skype, Linked-in and the MySpace social network, […]
2 poems
Image: © Charles Eastwood Hometown Elegy Plumstead Road is a zip in the town’s mended dress. You’d like the new half, its cleanness. The posh cafes. Though a cup of tea costs what we used to pay for a pizza and a pizza, no joke, is what we paid for […]
Drought
Image: © Charles Eastwood everywhere the land is now taken into drought mandatory water shutoffs only water your lawns after 6 pm and we let our lawns die and neighborhood after neighborhood becomes burned and the city gradually loses its color until the valley bakes down into a light brown and i drive around […]
Issue 29 ‘Displacement’: Editorial
Image: © Charles Eastwood This special issue of The Manchester Review presents fiction, nonfiction and poetry responses to the theme of Displacement. Reflecting the range of writing and artforms we are proud to attract, this issue presents recognised as well as new names alongside Manchester street photography by Charles Eastwood. Our inbox overflowed with original, […]