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.
