By SIMON COLLINGS. with collages by John Goodby. ◊ Now how about a night-cap before turning in Mr Greb, it is Greb isn’t it, or perhaps you fancy something stronger? —Ann Quin, Berg So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a […]

and three more new poems. By Peter Blair. • Snapshot, Sachsenhausen his is me in the execution trench — under the automatic gallows in front of the bullet-stopper, knotting a silk scarf as you shoot, suspend and capture me. In that panopticon, we can’t have missed the concrete obelisk and fractured phial, the hanging-pole that […]

By JOHN TAYLOR.  with drawings by Sam Forder.   a tree trying to take root in the chilly air while you sit on a branch in its crown along the wet ground and breathe deeply • another tree stands on the same muddy bank the surrogate shore the trembling reflection of its needles in backwater […]

By Olivia Tuck. ♦ Marker’s Comments: 1 irst thoughts upon reading portfolio draft: the work is interesting | if typical of a younger woman with your | ahem | anyway | fairly confident in voice | a nice turn of phrase | a focus | a sense of effort | excuse my candour | but […]

  Five Prose Poems. By LUCY HAMILTON.  • Crossings and critical points I. indow on Paris. I peered through the bars down to the cobbles five floors below. I could only interpret the event in retrospect. Transfer my perspective into my young cousin’s shoes. But she didn’t see it happen. She was in that room […]

And two more new poems. By STEVEN MATTHEWS.   o earnestly they walk, the dead, the streets of their city, all suits and fedoras, tie-pins straight, glittery brooches perfectly pinned on lapels of winter coats, a few cars lingering at kerbs, cheerful groups in the cafés not noticing the singing sweep of light shining down […]

  By Chloe Phillips. ◊ blow things up for a living, so I guarantee that I can do your taxes. I’ll put on my uniform if you ask: I’m a volunteer firefighter, full-time pimp; I made $5,000,000 last year— that’s irrelevant. I’m known for being funny, like six-pack inducing funny;) My friends describe me as […]

By Mark Scroggins. 76. he child an animal to be tamed, made human, softened and planed, fitted in the missing puzzle-piece space, fine gradations and subtly lived conditions, a green light to walk. The volatile spirit of conversation or alcohol, fixed and channeled into the axis a crystal form. Apart, the trance- like life of […]