{"id":13246,"date":"2026-08-28T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13246"},"modified":"2026-08-28T16:50:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:50:21","slug":"2-poems-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13246","title":{"rendered":"2 poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Image: \u00a9 Charles Eastwood<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hometown Elegy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Plumstead Road is a zip<\/p>\n

in the town\u2019s mended dress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You\u2019d like the new half, its cleanness.<\/p>\n

The posh cafes. Though a cup of tea costs<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

what we used to pay for a pizza<\/p>\n

and a pizza, no joke,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is what we paid for our flights to Rome.<\/p>\n

Taxi boats carve up the Thames.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can take them up town<\/p>\n

for twice the price of the monorail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And all the new flats,<\/p>\n

like the old blocks<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in their dad\u2019s best suits.
I won\u2019t tell you what they<\/em> cost \u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your dad used to say, All the gear, no idea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I think of that, pushing my baby<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

past the hippy shop that\u2019s now a bookies.<\/p>\n

On our side tramps still beg for a pound.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The covered market\u2019s collapsed<\/p>\n

like a storm-beaten hay barn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The pet shop with the anorexic hamsters<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0gone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the mini-cab office the same woman<\/p>\n

behind the glass partition<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

still an indiscriminate age, taps her fingers,<\/p>\n

still yellow from old fag smoke,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

asks where I\u2019m going,<\/p>\n

tells me to wait by the Wimpy on the corner.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll know who you\u2019re after, babe,<\/em><\/p>\n

he\u2019s driving a white Honda Civic.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Glosa on Larkin\u2019s The Trees<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The trees are coming into leaf<\/em><\/p>\n

Like something almost being said;<\/em><\/p>\n

The recent buds relax and spread,<\/em><\/p>\n

Their greenness is a kind of grief.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Philip Larkin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fuck you! <\/em>scrawled in red pen<\/p>\n

along the low wall. Magpies tear up bread.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clouds seethe overhead. The baby\u2019s crying,<\/p>\n

my cough won\u2019t shift, my mind drifts<\/p>\n

to the last time we kissed\u2026<\/p>\n

my attention span is darting, brief.<\/p>\n

And you\u2019re still fucking dead.<\/p>\n

The trees are coming into leaf.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This morning I threw a ball<\/p>\n

for the dog. Baby took her first steps.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s started pointing at round objects.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d told you the end, you wouldn\u2019t believe me,<\/p>\n

your body wore bruises like graffiti<\/p>\n

you rasped a final croaking breath<\/p>\n

(god, you\u2019re still fucking dead)<\/p>\n

like something almost being said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m on my own now, cleaning, chopping,
doing laundry, dragging shopping. Your garden\u2019s<\/p>\n

overrun with foreign weeds. The rosebush<\/p>\n

sleeping, I bent down to it, weeping, pricked<\/p>\n

my finger on an angry thorn. I licked<\/p>\n

the wound and watched: it bled.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re still fucking dead.<\/p>\n

The recent buds relax and spread.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She\u2019s not a baby anymore, she\u2019s toddling<\/p>\n

and maybe soon she\u2019ll really start to talk.<\/p>\n

The windows open, we let a breeze in,<\/p>\n

winter\u2019s finished, we\u2019re not freezing, the roses<\/p>\n

are waving from the lawn. As our toddler dozes<\/p>\n

I spot an army of frogs, led by one fat chief.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re still fucking dead.<\/p>\n

Their greenness is a kind of grief.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katie Beswick is a writer from southeast London. Her recent poems appear in And Other Poems, Ink Sweat & Tears, Rattle and Narrative Magazine. Her poetry collection Plumstead Pram Pushers (2024) is published under Red Ogre’s chapbook series, and her hybrid book of poetry, cultural history and arts criticism is Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture (Routledge 2025). She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: \u00a9 Charles Eastwood   Hometown Elegy   Plumstead Road is a zip in the town\u2019s mended dress.   You\u2019d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[376,441,443],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n2 poems - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13246\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2 poems - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Image: \u00a9 Charles Eastwood   Hometown Elegy   Plumstead Road is a zip in the town\u2019s mended dress.   You\u2019d like the new half, its cleanness. 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