Don't miss an evening with two amazing poets, tomorrow October 8th 7pm at Preston Community Library

 

 

Dream Street 

 

Jennifer Wong

 

It wouldn’t have made sense
to go back, not even

for a nostalgic visit.
The houses have been torn down,

I’ve heard, by bulldozers.
Each cobblestone laboriously

hurled off the street.
The rich have moved in

to a street of mansions
and private, gated gardens.

The magnolia trees were gone.
Don’t ask me how.

The grocer run by a kind
Sikh, was the last to go.

On his last day, he gave away
the fruits for free. So many

mangoes and lychees left.
It wouldn’t have made sense

even to go back
to snap a picture.

The rich wouldn’t allow it.
There’s a sign right there:

trespassers: penalty £5000.
But each time, each count

of magnolia
bears the size of hope.

 

On Hold 

Caroline Smith

'There is no timescale for dealing with this application.'

    He was just twenty-three,
    Arjan Mehta, when first he began
    calling the Home Office
    from a red phone box
    on the corner of Preston Road;
    would push against
    and let fall behind him
    the heavy creaking door,
    into its stale, vacated, smoke smell,
    stand on its concrete, littered floor
    his fingers twisting through
    the plastic snake cord,
    dragging round the metal dial,
    eager about his application.
    Seventeen years have passed
    with no answer.
    He is now forty.
    The sealed-up phone box
    long out of service,
    the black cradle
    within its sepulchre,
    silent as an obsidian urn.