'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.

'Anthems' by Sawsan Khalaf

The same way pink-faced college kids
Yelled at the President, the war, the country
The same way the hipsters stood and said
“What the hell” to America with cigarettes
between their teeth
The same way us Bahrainis scrawl graffiti over
The rulers' heads, amputated by headshots
In their glorious photographs
The same way they said we ain’t standing for this
Only in Ikea couches and in a
soft voice
The same way I lie in bed at 4:26
Turning the pillow to the cold side and
Watching the city through dirt-stained
Glass panes and wanting to break though
To that cloud up near the Grand Continental
And deliver the world’s message
To you.

This particular poem was the International Winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2008.

'Things Of The Mind / Things In The World' by Jim Dolan

after that storm in june

bradford pear tree
heavywet the

black boy on his bike that's
too small sirens
swarm like bee's from a nest

the

front porch bedecked with
geranium begonia impatiens
enough latin for a mass

concrete driveway dark and
slick
filaments of current slice

the sky

these gnats swarm
my ears
they bother me

Jim Dolan is part of the Oak Cliff Circle Of Poets, a group that used to meet weekly (and may continue this tradition still) in Oak Cliff, Texas. You can visit their website, here.

'In The Car Passing A Park' by Anando M Sexton

The trees drove to
morning.

Stop signs
went with the cars
to the park
in Dallas.

The black building
fell apart
in a different park.

Anando is actually a child, whose spoken word is transcribed by his proud poet father. Surprisingly, he has performed at a wide variety of venues in and around Dallas, Texas.

'Owls' by Sarah Westcott

I carry the owls with me
deep in my pocket or tucked
in the cup of my bra: they doze,
bills dipped in a bib of feathers,
turn janglesome if I forget they
are there when I run for the bus.
They come with me to work:
warm-blooded and tickly as fingers.
We sit in the road, the owls and I,
lost in the dwining day, the failing
sun a shinicle over the town.
I carry their flight over dreaming
hills, hollow bones lifting and keening.
They gowl for slumgullion,
cagmag, fresh mice: get shifty
as we reach the back country,
tear through my blouse,
glide over the spinney, searching,
searching -

I carry the owls with me, still,
in vellum and in sepia. I carry
them on my tongue and I feed them
to our children. May they carry the owls
for us all, their darknesses, their eyes.

Sarah Westcott lives in London working as a news reporter and editor for the Daily Express. Her work has been published in various anthologies and magazines.

'Destinations, IV' by Nick Courtright

Even after I died, I could not close my eyes
as the tiny empires

pile up their bodies. Four quarters for a dollar, the playground leaves

make small tornadoes of possibility, and at the waterfront
the poor are music as they wash
their pants. Their song and the wind, their song and the wind.

At the waterfront, the slovenly boat comes in and on its side
scrawled in stenciled block letters
is the name of our understanding—seven black-faced laughing gulls call out
the ship’s name in staccato, and it’s true

the water is cast-iron deep and the groan it makes
sounds like what it is: children.

Even after I died I could not close my eyes, not even after I died.

The weather makes crude maps of our emotions, the currents of the sea,
but only for so long. Sometimes, wind moves
so quickly across the bay it’s as if it’s holding it down.

Nick Courtright lives in Austin, Texas, where he dabbles in music journalism. His poetry has been published in a variety of small publications. To read his blog, click here.

'Leaves In Autumn' by Kieran Corcoran

Floating forth from father-branch they came,

The same in form as friends before and after,

Riding rafters, racers round roads unknown to crafter;

Thrust by breezes' laughter, building Autumn's fame

Came the tree's debris set free: these falling leaves

Bereave the ageing year's near neighbour:

To restore from hoar the life before is but lost labour -

Winter's ways won't heed reprieves.

So we see the panoply of season's shrinking,

Driving death's breath down through the world;

Hurled high to lofty ledges too.

But through the bluster bursts Spring's beauty winking,

Knowing the notion now to be unfurled:

Nothing tires that time cannot renew.

Kieran is an undergraduate studying English at Cambridge University.