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...

    January January’s a recent graduate: cheap suit, polyester or nylon, some shiny fabric. New to the team. Golden handshake. Keen to get its teeth into something. Loads of ideas how to improve things, make the place run more smoothly. Has an eye on...

      Song for a yellow star belt In the square they are beating men to classical music last year they danced in this spot, the same children watched. In the square a local orchestra kneels before its composer he is made to throttle the defiant celloist...

      It’s the way the garden clouds over of a sudden clouds returning confuse the situation picking petals off the roses breezing turning a sunny day mute as birds get sleepy fade from thinking slim like a silver birch sapling thin    light of petunias...

      Excerpt from a free Amazon murder mystery Her violet eyes flashed like shocked blown bulbs as the truth hit her like an intangible sock. The dinnerplate of her delusions had been shattered by the weight of a big helping of realisation. How could...