Piccadilly Gardens
At a Glance
- • A rain-soaked walk through Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, in which the speaker's contempt for the crowd turns on his own reflection in a tram window.
- • Author: Gemma Bright
- • Form: Free verse, six unrhymed stanzas
- • Setting: Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
- • Published: Tales From A Harrogate Caravan
Rain again. Everyone looks fucking miserable.
Buses cough smoke into the afternoon.
Someone’s shouting at a pigeon.
Someone’s shouting at nobody.
The trams keep coming. Nobody moves.
A lad in a tracksuit spits by my shoe.
Two tourists photograph a pile of rubbish.
A woman counts coins outside Greggs.
Three blokes laugh like the world owes them money.
It probably does.
The benches are wet. The bins are full.
A siren cuts through the traffic noise.
Someone’s selling roses. Someone’s selling misery.
Everyone’s got somewhere better to be.
Nobody looks like they’re going there.
I watch a man argue with his reflection
in the black glass of a closed shop.
For a second, I think about asking if he’s alright.
Then I check my phone.
There’s nothing on it.
The whole city reeks of wet concrete
and chips gone cold in paper bags.
I walk through the gardens, hating the noise,
the crowds, the faces, the fucking weather.
Then I catch my own reflection in a tram window
and look away before it looks back.
About Gemma Bright
Gemma Bright writes about the people nobody photographs and the places nobody pretends to like. She is not sentimental about cities, crowds, or the small cruelties people commit on each other in public. She has no image, no patience, and no interest in being liked by the people she describes.
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