'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.