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      The Art of Collaboration Whatever job he’s given, the collaborator is a perfect fit. A man of no fixed particulars. His views are plastic and always on the verge of being melted down and made otherwise. His life is a full orchestra of raised...

      At the Birmingham markets When I was young, before the sky was torn, I strutted in-and-out of poisoned jobs and bare-walled rooms, poor yet indestructible, naive and full of quirk and piss, not belonging but belonging, knowing more than anyone...

      Thief You took my index finger and showed me where to go. My thumb you painted green. What do you want to grow? My elbow helps you move across a crowded room. But why'd you take my mouth? What will you say, to whom? You swept my feet away and left...

      You There you are again at the far end of the empty beach, scrambling over rocks beneath the abandoned nunnery painted ice-cream green. Fleet as a greyhound, tiny as a mote floating in the outer corner of my eye, matted hair a billowing ghost of...

      How to let it go Pick it up. Feel the weight of it in your hands. Pinch, roll, squeeze, flatten, slap it like fresh clay. Own the reactions of your body. Pinpoint the lump in your throat, the knot in the lowest part of your abdomen. Coax the howl...

      Nothing ever happens A familiar slideshow of picture postcards sidle by through the bubble of your train window; trees new in leaf and freshly-printed lambs, fractured stonewalling clinging impossibly to hill, separating off precious little from...

      Earthworks West Kennett I migrate back to this farmland where the level of the corn field has been distorted by the earthen mound facade of a house that swallows the dead and has for centuries. On a ledge inside the entrance, in the human-summoned...

      Some things never change Before I went to school one day I hid it under the bed, forgot about it for years. Then, when I met you, something triggered so I dusted it off, placed it in the centre of the kitchen table. You hardly noticed – just...

      Charge Sleeping in doorways, they huddle against the cold; plunge the needle tip. Searching for a vein, while others crave a socket; plug-in heroin. Waiting for a plane, they hug the corridors; hooked to the drip.     Peter Bickerton is...

      The Machinist (Put Something of Yourself into Your Work) The hum and buzz of faster machines buoy her. Decides brightness should be her default. She unwraps a blood-red cuff from her wrist, smoothes it onto the metal bed of her Jones Imperial....

      Rocks without names I watch the silence out there through the hurly gush of Atlantic and tide swashing at everything I mean, if I could find words. I keep hearing it say nothing to me.  The moon shining on white flecks of rock in the cliff face...

  *   The syringe should never vacate The arm it pierces Growing into white blossom, tied around A finger, it displays its own idleness A presentiment Pulling up a fruity plasma Of the unhomely     John Vickers has published over 60 poems in...

      Bed Blocker ~ 8/7 An early morning call summons me north to your death-bed. Delayed by London’s chaos after yesterday’s bombs I arrive too late. Mary has kept vigil through the night, soothed and reassured you, arranged for Mum, also in-patient,...

      When I become a Rhino I’ll fill out twenty-fold, grow solid as an anvil. The horizon of me will cross the far savannah, My mouth will grow wyd, keratin thicken upward. I’ll develop rough-bark, tarmac dermal armour to deflect the sharpest barbs,...

          Kandinsky called me from an opalescent sky   I’ve cracked the space      he said so you can read it   like a poem or the transcript of a lie.     Calvin Holder lives in Gloucestershire where he is much affected by...

      Last Thursday in November Together Since 1957 Four newest mangy old dogs, done being punished for yesterday’s quasi-traditional jockeying to grab what they may have thought of as their fair share, one of several home-grown free range cooked...

      The Crossing Isn’t it too late? I couldn’t help asking myself time and again. It was too late: the sun was gone, my chance had left; there was only one way, and I’d have no say. I washed my hands in the stream and warmed them with my breath; I saw...