AnotherSun: the Anthology of ten Here's the Editor's Choice of ten poems published by AnotherSun in its first year. I wanted to reflect the variety of poetry recieved from AnotherSun's contributors.  Don't forget there's loads of other good stuff on the Golden Apples page.  Plus more work and biographies of the featured poets.

Train I ride is 16 coaches long Jonathan Spooner After the sidings, The Palladian railway bridge Takes us through the sky of an enchanted valley. On your left, innumerable, unimaginable shades of green. On your right, innumerable, unimaginable shades of green. Leaves burning in a frenzy of gold and red You may also notice the crescent mirror of the ox-bow lake Gleaming through the beeches. Blue sparks explode from the wheels here Bleaching out the pillars of the parapet. As vista upon vista upon vista recedes into the mist God, and we accelerate at last Through the dark stripe of the distant hills unmoving. To your right, carnage of fallen trees To your left, carnage of fallen trees. The breath of Zeus has untenanted the dryads And we would like to apologise For any inconvenience this may have caused. Great pyres of cut wood pass on either side And 14 pines have fallen quite close to the track Like a diagram. Signalling the end of the sweep of black trees And the beginning of the silver birch. Pale wands of the necromancer if you like. And we are moving like a clot along a vein Towards the heart of London. Look up into the sky and you will see Jet trails converging in a monstrous fork In the purple air above the sand pits Yellow jet trails converging in a monstrous fork In the purple air above the sandpits. The station approaches now And I propose That all that links these facts Fading daily, repeating daily, changing daily Fading daily, repeating daily, changing daily Is the fact that I noticed them And repeated them in front of you. Stardust Theory Dorothy Doyle Mienko We wear murdered stars on our fingers, in our ears and noses: extraterrestrial carbon creates diamonds. The stones we give to pledge our love were once galactic, the celestial orphans. A billion year old dance of veils crashed to earth: nothing more than burned out light. For Friends Missing in Action Walt McDonald Today I'm crazy for prairie, stranded in snow-packed mountains with cliffs and columbine.  Any flat range would do, guiding a gelding away from the barn.  No oats, today, not yet.  I'm mad for rattlers and cactus, cougars sleeping it off, hawks caught spiraling higher in thermals.  If the sorrel heads for a fence, I'll snip it, enough barbed wire to mend it later when I'm sane.  If Joe or Billy Ray rides by, I'll tip back my hat and stop.  We'll swap dry facts about mares and cows, how many colts and calves, how many died.  We'll slap leather like bandits and blast a stump full of holes.  We won't keep score.  Other old vets may hear us and call, cell phones like locusts buzzing across a dozen miles.  Loping, they'll find us lazy and lost like a posse, far from wives and the war, the sun so dry we burn.  If there's a shade, we'll all dismount and squat, tip Stetsons back and take turns telling jokes, blondes in shiny red cars, politics, salesmen and neighbors' sheep.  Dusk, or when nobody laughs anymore, someone will say There it is, and we'll rock longer on our heels till the shade's all gone or one of us straightens up and says It's dinner time. A Love Poem Marci Rae Johnson At night I wait for you, watching the day unravel from the cliffs, frayed light clinging to the shadows of a wall that slips and sinks into the hill banks. The trees are gray and thin from wearing of the fog that sifts in waves and settles, dead upon my skin. Listen! When I am quiet and alone it is your voice I hear singing with the angels, holy, holy, holy Lord-- we are holy; then meet me in the sanctuary where lips form prayers to broken stone, my knees on bended ground, dry knees upon the ground where our words lie. How do I love thee? I have counted the ways with tears-- isn't that enough? It is not enough. It is never enough. There is no way from one person to another. At the monkey-feast table Kelley Jean White We are gathered at the table all generations: it is low to the floor: we sit cross legged: pass bowls of bright food: share one to another: I am reminded of the gifts we give and find in odd places: the atlas of anatomy: how your father pointed to the plates of facial muscles and said look: these must be Jews: it was a German artist: we were silent and our hands were still: years later he had a letter from a granddaughter: he had praised the work: she had responded: I do not recall the answer: I cannot ask him if we truly used: studied the murdered: if dates and times were as he had surmised: this table has a hole in the middle: just as Gram said: just as in her girlhood in rural China: there would sit the monkey alive and frantic: soon the top of his skull would be lifted: and we would hold sharp spoons. No Yella Girl DuEwa M. Frazier Ha ha ha ha you jus a yella girl a high yella girl and you ain't cute how Black is you? how Black you gon be? Yo mama white, is yo mama white? She's so pale she jus about white These are the endless tauntings from little school girls who seemed to live to drive a sister often I fought back not with my fists but with my dignity and holding my head up high not that I was better but I screamed from the inside know me for me, for my insides, not what I look like but no one heard so I played the role, often a confused one as many Black girls sometimes do I hid myself often wandering into the depths of who I really was who I am with my pen and my pad but see only God really knew the depths of me and who I really was inside See I was freer than the plaid socks around my ankles and I was freer than the braids with ribbons at the ends that my mother put in my hair And I was freer than those sad notes I listened to from Sade's Is it a Crime I, I could relate to Sade's melancholy words from her lovelorn lips to the innocent peak in my ears I understood the notes of this heart torn yella girl so I journeyed through many phases and friendships asking, Is this when I am free from other people's perceptions of my outward externity and even perceptions of myself? As a girl must grow up I found ways to turn my melancholy notes into freedom songs See I hummed that yella away to John Coltrane's Love Supreme I danced that yella away to the rhythm of djembe drums I loved that yella away for the hearts of friends who have crossed my path I taught that yella away to be a guardian for children And I wrote that yella away in poems, letters, stories, essays, tributes and plays to hear my  voice my own unique voice and make a new picture of me I found what prejudices we have against one another for complexion and color just makes no sense I am half of a dark-chocolate man and half of a vanilla-peach woman and yellow or brown or tan or red are within a brilliant spectrum of who we are For all you yella girls out there who have suffered bruised ego for those who ask you who are you and why do you look the way you do? tell them Like a butterfly I represent a unique and divine creation of God, one of  many colors who cannot be labeled or controlled and bound by your limiting perceptions and lack of self love With that I am free to be my beautiful, Brown me You got the jitters Alicia Buller You are scared of trains buses planes Osama Bin Laden kids that kick bottles on the street the pimple that's growing on your foot next week's deadlines war bankruptcy mugging the woman you sit next to cats and dogs the London underground failure six-inch beards. On Sunday evenings something gnaws at your stomach as you eat, when you sleep the pain gets worse. So you eat more, laugh, make plans, sleep with people. You buy house in the country (it's safe there) an Audi TT Apple Mac leather sofas a conservatory swimming pool. But on Sunday evenings you feel like you might be sick. You play golf, ride horses, take up jogging, join aqua-aerobics. You host dinner parties and get quietly obliterated. On Sunday evenings your gut wrenches, it's being spooned out like a strawberry yoghurt. You're scared of the wrinkles under your eyes greyness in your roots yellow in your skin veins you can see on your legs that chunk of lard on your arse. You buy a hi-fi something from Prada a few magazines your favourite perfume a therapist. You join a yoga class buy new lino for the kitchen an automated garage and a DVD player for the kids. You buy brand-new everything you eat organic food but you're sick more often these days. You're scared of AIDS BSC CJD Anthrax old people the wrong shampoo. You take up trampolining origami you get a life-counsellor you start painting watercolours. One Sunday evening you vomit in your bed. You had a nightmare. You dreamt of a big black pit where you walked and walked. You heard a bat you think and the scream of a child. You couldn't see a wall or a way out, the ground was shaky you remember that. You knew someone would come along, if you walked for long enough, yes, someone would come along. You really did walk for a while and your knees were shaking then you began to cry because there was nothing. You lifted your head up to scream but nothing came. Just the pungent liquid that streamed from your mouth and caked the hollow of your neck.   Michael Manley Bhelor Santi Do you want turkey or ham? Do you want your bread whole-wheat or white? We sit in this café, the weather gray as a cat, and we talk about sandwiches. We can't talk about anything more important. I sip my water-and I watch you sip your water. Let's talk about something else, I think. I know, Michael Norman Manley, the late Prime Minister of Jamaica. Joshua. He was quite ugly, from the one picture I've saw of him in Caribbean Studies class. His father was a rich lawyer, and his mother was an English sculptor. They were first cousins. He served in the Canadian Army during WWII, studied at the London School of Economics, and worked for the BBC in the early fifties. Befriended Fidel Castro. Was married several times, had five children, and tried to make Jamaica socialist. But, of course, making a third-world country successful is like making a 747 from dirt. I smile at you-I wanted to set aside lunch and kiss you, feeling your warm tongue deep inside my mouth. But you continue to talk about turkey and ham. I think about Manley again-a fair-skinned man who liked to dress like an African. I say that I want turkey with lettuce and white bread. I'm connected only to my thoughts Feelings Prasenjit Maiti We sit around your séance tonight as all our rotten old loves flock around like ghosts in their eerie lovemaking we don't learn, we don't laugh we're wallpapers hanging tattered and loose - as we must - we don't mourn, we don't bluff but Hello!  Wait a second or two my first first love: who are you? Asking me to glee as the traffic changed from red to blue like your lips from red to blue so untrue my first first love: who are you? I Suspect Lynn Peters   I suspect There would be more poems About sex If it rhymed with more than Pecks Necks Erects and ejects.   This begins to sound promising. I may write one.

AnotherSun: the Anthology of ten Here's the Editor's Choice of ten poems published by AnotherSun in its first year. I wanted to reflect the variety of poetry recieved from AnotherSun's contributors.  Don't forget there's loads of other good stuff on the Golden Apples page.  Plus more work and biographies of the featured poets.