'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.