Embedded Files
Manchester Stations: Knowledge Corridor
1. Central Library
Living so much in books
sometimes I miss what’s right
in front of my face:
a spectre haunts the streets
ghost men shout at hotels
2. Nuclear Tests Veterans Memorial
But I cogitate the filth
of the past for hours:
how the light burnt eyeballs
when you covered your face
against the ‘H’ Bombs flash
3. Emmeline Pankhurst Statue
Because of strikes no bus:
how the world tips slightly
when a woman takes Canterbury:
where Emmeline points at us
that look in her eyes
4. George Street
I missed the blue plaque
of the man who discovered
the true cause of colourblindness
in our gaps of perception:
our histories clogged with fog
5. The Gay Village
Before our very eyes: Rainbows
conduct joy like nothing else:
the windows of warehouse flats
shimmy in the autumn sun:
I enter the Village alight
6. Statue of Alan Turing
Where Alan talks to birds
an apple in his hand:
his last research concerning spots
on a fractal leopard’s back;
the ways we camouflage hurt
7. Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre
At midnight in my head:
sometimes my brain plays Chess
and my mouth plays Scrabble:
one more carbon-based lifeform
wanders these thin-skinned streets
8. The Deaf Institute
Many’s the time my ears
came buzzing out of venues:
skin only one atom thick:
that statue of Jesus heals
the deaf behind pigeon wire
9. The Rutherford Building
The nucleus of hydrogen burns:
we’re all made of particles:
light breaks through in waves:
the universe’s basic building blocks
samba across my broken tongue
10 Sir Arthur Lewis Building
These nights of industrial heritage:
another old printing works aflame:
the varied constituents of love
more important than the concepts
of wages and of capital
11 The Mancunian Way
Breathe in past University Green
out under the Mancunian Way:
the last time I walked
through this underpass the tents
caught in my camera’s lens
12. John Dalton Statue
The weather seems unnaturally warm:
the wind’s blowsy hair unkempt:
after last week’s storm: leaves
scatter: drop on John Dalton
glaring from his colourblind chair
13. The Medlock
Which brings up the river
to the surface once more:
where they saw their bones
when thousands lived among offal
a brick’s throw from here
14. Rochdale Canal
The state of my flat:
so many myths build up
won’t ever leave us alone:
whatever happened to the Pusher
happened to all of us
Moses Heap and the Scary Effigy
‘During the long days of work and especially in winter, in the factory,
in order to keep us youngsters awake, an effigy, the full size of a man,
made of cotton, and when required, was carried round the room on a
man’s back to waken us all up’. —Moses Heap My Life and Times
Cacophonies of loom
– can’t ever scrape
that din from the brain
Don’t know at what age
I began to go to the mill
only that fayther
carried me – aged five
over the moors on his back
afore first light
scritched holes in the dark
even as I grew
nights of winter dragged
Can’t seem never to
get away tek the Witchway
up from Manchester back
to ghost clogs – tap tap
nostalgic dances
on millstone cobblestones
20 out of 24 mills
employed childer under 9
12 hour shifts
afore the Factory Act
them dreams come back
mee-mawing
of a scary effigy
made of owd cotton
the full height of a man
carried round the floors
to keep young hands – our
delicate small hands
awake to their tasks
Steven Waling is a poet & writer from Manchester. His last publication, Ony Road Up Deep North, was a set of haiku cards purported to be translated from the Japanese by a poet called Mankyo (Zimzalla 2025). He currently works as a personal care assistant.
Copyright © 2026 by Steven Waling, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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