'Millers' by Dan Veach

Small, unassuming, dusty gold,

their wings swept back like jets,

we called them “millers”

years before I heard

of human mills and millers.

Little skippers built for speed,

you had to be lucky and lightening quick

to catch one. When released,

they left a fairy powder

on our fingers, flecks of gold

more finely divided than dust.

I knew what it meant to catch a fleeting thing

before they ever taught me how to grind

the flour of the word. Before I ever heard

of Chaucer’s miller, windmills,

Don Quixote’s reckless charge—

before I ever threw myself, headlong

against the whirling beauty of the world.

Dan Veach is the founder and editor of the international poetry journal Atlanta Review. He also translates Chinese verse.

'Light' by Connie Miller

I grasp at the last rays of sun from day

And I wish sunlight would return to me

I hear the sound of people on their way

But I want time to stop so I am free

Again in the embrace of summer

When all my troubles are strangers and still

The wind brushes past me like a lover

One that knows my inner thoughts and self will

Always whisper to me like the breeze of autumn

When the leaves are dead and falling off

The trees have aching hearts and I am numb

And left alone like the clouds with not enough

Love like the brightest star cannot sustain

Our hearts through winter months will die again.

Connie Miller studies a science course at Cambridge University. The exact name of the course I can't remember.

'Baby Tooth' by Thomas Clancy

When dem is hungry

Mans gone stick you

Merk you for your kebab

Not no bollocks job, trust.

Straight up knife light ribs tight.

Blood flows from bleeding spa

Faces like drawn got sour

Shank’s still shining. Blades bent blunt.

In the gutter. Floating in endz dirt water

Youts all crying. Shades tipped down.

Little girl runs, mother ignores.

NY baseball cap shielding eyes

Your little brother dies

While your father stands among yous packka and cries.

Kfc paper lines aisle of funereal prosession

As youts father carries body over yonder

Mother and sister trip down to depression

And mans stand still, shake hands, click fingers, touch fists and wonder.

Old lady passes. Sucks her teeth and says ‘young people.’

Her teeth clenched tight and her hands they tremble

Walks on wheeling her chequered trolley past the dawn.

And she yawns

And the mother of the dying brother cries ‘you old woman. Know nothing of this.’

The ones arrive all flashing cars and tightness

All clear the scene and semi racist politeness

And people leave and leave dead youth

To uniformed white mans in search of dead truth

Thomas Clancy has been described by some as one of the great young talents of British theatre. He spends his time in London writing plays and working at the Royal Court.

'This Concrete Wins Awards, Annually' by Thomas Clancy

I read walls

Though I have been blind

Eyes full of this century’s diseased semen.

Under crass unmedicinal plaster

I spy Olivier’s tongue

And Wesker’s scribbling

Through a haze of removed asbestos

One spots dangerous constellations

Relevant only in that they bear knives to your lungs

Volume upon volume do not speak volumes

In monochrome comparison

To a crumbling wall

Or tea stained paper

Or dried purple flowers

Tipped from black plastic

Onto dry Indian floors.

I do not feel much anymore.

Anything?

For newness is synonymous with optical sterility

I’m fine with brown

Or grey or dust

Yet you insist on pink plastic

When I’m fine with oak

L’histoire habite en les briques et le mortier

Synthesis filled with anything

Is still

Quite

Empty.

Thomas Clancy is primarily a playwright and lives in London, where he converses, works and drinks with other playwrights. He has been described by some as one of the great young talents of British theatre.

'First It Is Taken Away From Me' by Richard Tillinghast

And now I am home again.

I can sit out in my pyjama bottoms,

                                       two cats sprawled

belly-down on the warm deckboards

                                  to converse with

the Saturday after Father's Day.

The air is saturated with moisture

as a rum cake is with rum.

Like a tourist, like a slow boater,

                        like a firefly past the solstice,

I hover and scull and wobble

through these haunts and currents and air-pockets—

the day's emptiness

            radiant in the hollow of my spine.

Of the hospital I remember only:

Dry mouth, icy feet, rough dreams.

Nausea of waxed linoleum

down a hall the gurney ran along

                        at scaresome speed.

The gabble of television sets,

and low voices leaking through half-closed doors.

The graph of the monitor repeated, repeated, repeated.

Burgundy velvet like the robe of a grand vizier,

the clematis blossoms like big sagging stars

                                                          or moonfish

soak light in and collapse it into their mystery.

The clematis plays Juliet on her balcony,

bosoming out into moonlight,

ripe with the desire to be known,

giving herself, wishing to taste and be

permeated by the world,

              as if she had never breathed air till now.

That's how it is with me,

                         wing-shot and hampered as I am,

idly rubbing the IV tape marks off my arm.

First it is taken away from me,

then it is given back.

'Divining Myself' by Montana Blue

I take the morning out,
beneath the silent tree.
Reach deeply for the moon.
My God. It's me.

To know.
To know.
Like solving snow.

This poem was taken from a website of corny love poetry.

'The Owl' by Wendy Videlock

Beneath her nest,
a shrew's head,
a finch's beak
and the bones
of a quail attest

the owl devours
the hour,
and disregards
the rest.

Wendy is a poet from western Colorado. You can read this and other US contemporary poems at American Life in Poetry.

'Grandpa Vogt's - 1959' by Ben Vogt

The food is on the table. Turkey tanned

to a cowboy boot luster, potatoes mashed

and mounded in a bowl whose lip is lined

with blue flowers linked by grey vines faded

from washing. Everyone’s heads have turned

to elongate the table’s view—a last supper twisted

toward a horizon where the Christmas tree, crowned

by a window, sets into itself half inclined.

Each belly cries. Each pair of eyes admonished

by Aunt Photographer. Look up. You’re wined

and dined for the older folks who’ve pined

to see your faces, your lives, lightly framed

in this moment’s flash. Parents are moved,

press their children’s heads up from the table,

hide their hunger by rubbing lightly wrinkled

hands atop their laps. They’ll hold the image

as long as need be, seconds away from grace.

Ben Vogt is a poet from Nebraska. This piece is taken from the website American Life In Poetry.

'The Coffins' by Michael Chitwood

Two days into the flood

they appear, moored against

a roof eave or bobbing caught

in the crowns of drowned trees.

Like fancy life boats

from an adventurer’s flag ship,

brass plating and grips,

walnut sheen, scroll work,

they slip through the understory

on this brief, bad river.

What have they discovered

and come back to account?

Or is this the beginning

of the marvelous voyage

and they plan never to return?

Michael Chitwood is a poet from North Carolina. You can view this poem and more US contemporary verse at American Life in Poetry.

'Sky' by Francesca H.

Watching the sky, falling in.

The clouds chase my lazy eyes.

Blue untainted, no smoky guise.

Too deep for mirrored tricks within.

Drenching the earth it licks, a din

Of ground-groans fading, soft

And far, cascading aloft-

Away! -cleansed of their grimy sin.

Francesca H writes a poetry blog called The Periled Point.

'Beloved Daughter' by Anna Wigley

The crows that perch on her stone

are older than she was.

Their caws go over

her scant twenty inches.

What would she have made

of this maze of graves?

She would have recognised silence,

rain, gently amniotic,

and tiny muffled thuds.

And the air would have stirred

some memory of being wheeled,

just once, outdoors.

But greenness and birds,

and trees like living houses,

and the sky (not even handled

with a word)

- these she now lies under

like her last home,

though she did not stay

long enough to meet them,

and knew neither feather nor stone.

Anna Wigley was the winner of the Poetry Review Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2000.

'Keith Chegwin As Fleance' by Paul Farley

Keith Chegwin as Fleance

The next rung up from extra and dogsbody

and all the clichés are true – days waiting for

enough light, learning card games, penny-ante,

while fog rolls off the sea, a camera

gets moisture in its gate, and Roman Polanski

curses the day he chose Snowdonia.

He picked you for your hair to play this role:

a look had reached Bootle from Altamont

that year. You wouldn't say you sold your soul

but learned your line inside a beating tent

by candlelight, the shingle dark as coal

behind each wave, and its slight restatement.

"A tale told by an idiot . . ." "Not your turn,

but perhaps, with time and practice . . .", the Pole starts.

Who's to say, behind the accent and that grin,

what designs you had on playing a greater part?

The crew get ready while the stars go in.

You speak the words you'd written on your heart.

Paul Farley is by now an established contemporary writer, and has won a long list of poetry awards.

'The Beetles of N'Douci' by Hal S. Fleming

The beetles of N'Douci bake upside down
In the courtyard by the truck stop.
Rhinoceros they are, four fingers long,
A quarter-moon horn, armored, ancient shell,
Appendages pedaling slowly at the sun.
Tumbled from the hibiscus shade, they won't
Escape sun nor eighteen-wheel Mack rigs
Rowed up at the weigh station by Marie's,
Nor fast Peugeots crammed with migrants
From the north, nor Land Rovers of whites
In tight khaki shorts and tinted glasses,
Who all stop to refresh at Chez Marie's.
The beetles' and the lumber rigs' entrance.
Trucks lurch rattling chained logs,
Mahogany, they say, ripped from the lush land
Sighing to lowly neighbors, and carted
In these cruel caravans to the coast.
And at the stop, the drivers of these rigs
Beckon to the palm wine and banana girls
Kicking away the dying beetles of N'Douci.

'English 101' by Dan Provost

Have you seen themTHEMcircumventing in the corner of the living

room-the artsy, fartsy, crowd-gasping for breath, agonizing over artistic

alignment

Give me the grit, the dogma from Hell, which scans from bar to barfrom

quiet death to quiet death

Let the bones of the poetic speakers rattle in the catacombs of shametheir

agony is eternal indeed-but they sing the same old songthe same

old lines about emotional scars, which fail to heal,

Common man hides pain better than the poet does; bits and pieces die each

day

Each longing day

So, as academia launches its useless jargon-providing constant analysis over

every written line and phrase

Toast the loner, whose hands shake as he struggles to grip the penshacked

up in

a dying room with a dying bottle

He praises the day because he has survived

Again

Dan Provost's poetry has been published in numerous e-zines and poetry mags.

'A Statement From Some Guy On The Train' by Dan Provost

He told me that he liked the women who were amputated from the neck down-no

bones to pick clean after making love

No discussions

About anything

Worthwhile

Dan Provost is influenced by members of the Beat generation, and has had poetry published in numerous poetry mags and e-zines.

'Etymology' by Amanda Joy

Fairy tales were
what I read before
sleep in her house
From a huge book, left
near the bed

The more people I tell
the more I seem to show

We visit Wave Rock and
Mulka’s Cave with its
handprints and story
of a cross-eyed birth
and devoured children

I want a word
for this place
in my stomach
behind where
tiny feet will press
beneath my ribs

some ganglia, twisted
spaghetti of nerves
apparently

You eat scones with
your parents, at the kiosk
Writhing with baby
frogs, tiny waterholes
pocket the rock

I scoop some out
Smell of dead ones
makes me retch,
alone, I get scared
walk back

Overlooked, the ants
Mulka was left to
once he was speared
to death

Words are words
We leave
with a tshirt

Amanda Joy writes a popular poetry blog called Little Glass Pen.

'Ashes' by Gayle Bell

And when Im dead
they will say
she preached to much
the world still goes its own way
my ashy ass
will have missed it
couldnt control nothing when she was around
she going to be real pissed
when she finds out
she couldnt run nothing there either
when my remains are
added pollutants
they will say she died poor
Oh well, I was born that way
When Im gone Ill have the memories of love
no regrets
no reason
to tsk tsk tasket
to hell in a basket
There will be a memorial
loves and family
who know the real deal
will tell all my business
Ill listen
and laugh till I cry

Gayle Bell is an African American poet who is part of the Oak Cliff Circle of Poets.

excerpt from 'mermaid' by Dawn Lim

0

tonight a flood of rain

eliminates

the spaces of the earth

waterland; only the clouds

form its barriers

a breeze steers the leaf

of a boat like a free-

floating

compass

a fisherman

pulls in the sea with both arms,

and keeps it in a basket

to tame. he dreams

of teaching it to travel by air.

[…]

100

if there are no salt rivers, there will still be rain.

if there is no rain, there will still be the humidity.

if there is no humidity, there will still be tears for remembrance.

if eyes do not speak, there will still be my lips, upturned, broken bird.

if lips do not speak, then their silence will.

if silence will not, then memory will.

if memory will not, then absence will, reminding us

of how lightly we brushed our lips away from our pasts.

Dawn Lim was a winner in the Foyle Young Poets Awards 2004.