By Cathy Bolton

Location: Broom Lane, Levenshulme

The back yard after rain: a blackbird singing in the overgrown
forsythia and a Tibetan prayer flag of women’s underwear.

Beyond the thigh-high fence, identical white shirts pegged
shoulder to shoulder: table footballers shooting the breeze.

A man on Broom Lane wants to know if you’ve seen his fiancée;
a diamond fat as a knuckle. You don’t trust his tattooed hands.

Tramping through snow in Highfield Country Park, rusting
suspensions bleached from sight – sudden stink of fox.

6.30am at the bus stop, conversation thin, the moon huge
and silver, helium filled, drifting over Burnage.

Two Asian men in white hairnets sharing a cigarette
outside McVities, the rain sweet as a biscuit.

Foggy morning, a one woman police cordon
at the end of the street, no blood, no front page news.

Cathy Bolton is a founding member of the A6 Poets. She lives in Levenshulme – a surprisingly fertile source of inspiration. Her poetry and short stories have been published in a wide range of literary journals and anthologies. She has just completed an MA in writing and been awarded the Ictus Prize from Sheffield Hallam University.