Robert Crisp
In Terms of Fighting and Protest

Can my guts expect anything solid
from me in terms of standing up to
squids who, by some insane stroke
of horror, become tentacled dictators
of the deep and unknowing green sea?
No more than a swallow may outwit
the wind, said the wiry fortune teller
on her wheezing deathbed, offering
her final augury for a sip of my clean
water and a promise to bury her on land.
Outfitted with my unstable nerves, I dove
into a watery grave and made my peace.

Robert Crisp currently hides out in Savannah, GA, where he teaches English. He writes poetry as often as he can. Learn more at www.writingforghosts.com

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Malaika Favorite
The State of the Chicken Coop

The debate erupts in the chicken coop
Several hens clucking at once
Silenced by Lord Rooster
Pronouncing: Clucks are fake news

The sky is not falling
The dust we bathe in is clean
The water we drink
Is not polluted with nuclear waste

The symposium at one p.m.
Is not the conversation we had at Mar-a-Lago
Our table was in the center of the chicken coop
We roosters ate first; the hens followed

The other guest wore ear muffs
They heard nothing we assessed
We imported the wine from Russia
It was a deal made before the election

The corn was smuggled from Mexico
Blighted with disease
The cook was an illegal hen
With broken toes on crusty feet

She was deported
Before dinner was served
Nothing new happened that the media
Was able to report falsely

They repeated old news
One hundred times
In seventy-five ways
Of saying nothing

Did they read my morning tweet?
Did the sun arrive on time?
Don’t listen to green monkeys telling long tales
The wall will rise around the chicken coop

Malaika Favorite has received her BFA and MFA in art from LSU Baton Rouge, LA. Malaika won the 2016 Broadside Lotus Press Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for her collection of poems, ASCENSION, published in 2016 by Broadside Lotus Press. Her publications include: DREAMING AT THE MANOR, Finishing Line Press 2014, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT, published by New Orleans Poetry Journal Press, 1991.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Seungbihn Park
Bells

One stuck to the grey fridge
and one on the white side table
Painted ruby, glued with a pebble colored
magnet against the fridge
On the other hand
coated in gold with a hand
sewed holder
with the image of a skeleton of a cow
on black grass covered
with red, green, blue, and yellow wild flowers
On the edge,
the thin pieces of threads
were sinking out like fireworks

I remember,
when this strange carnival
in one of the villages of Lucerne
People dressed in sheep wool
and a wooden mask of kriens

Ringing Bells
“Ding Ding Ding”
til midnight
My roommate couldn’t force
herself to sleep
so she put on the mask of the old man
grieving, sorrowful
–trapped in a little girl’s body.

Seungbihn Park has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards at the National Level, and she is looking forward to participate in many more competitions as well as write for literary publications. Her poetry, short stories, and other works have been influenced by her diverse experiences in a variety of countries, such as Switzerland, South Korea, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic. As a 12-year-old middle schooler at International School Manila, she has been subject to a plethora of cultural perspectives and aims to share these through her poems.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Zoe Canner
laugh at men

sessions
can’t
take being

laughed at

let’s
never
refrain from

laughing
out
of respect

again
because
you have

to earn

respect and
well
sessions

let’s say
his
name
say it
with
me

alton sterling
murdered on

video
and
the officers

got off

hope is
a pipe

dream
despair
is sensible

Zoe Canner is an angry, anti-racist, 3rd Generation Holocaust Survivor. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Naugatuck River Review, The Laurel Review, and Arcturus of the Chicago Review of Books. She is an alumna of CalArts, Directors Lab West, and The Home School. She lives in Los Angeles where she indulges in hilly walks at dusk when the night-blooming jasmine is at its peak fragrance.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Sungyoun Jee
Fragile Kings

We climb up
to the top of the slide
slowly and carefully, scared
of the height. Under us
the sharp woodchips,
wait for us to fall.
We act like kings
who rule the playground.
We look over our subjects
the bowing trees,
the dancing fountain and
toddlers who look at us in awe.
When the sun comes down
we leave our thrones
and take a walk
through the forest
of street lights. And into the
dark track to hide
from our mothers who
will separate us and take us
home. But we know
they will find us. We
say our goodbyes
and leave our crowns
at the park. The next time
we meet, we may not
be kings. We might choose
to be monsters that lurk
under the abandoned thrones.

Sungyoun (Michael) Jee is a freshman at International School Manila. He has won awards in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Writing Contest for his poetry as well as in the Scholastics Art & Writing Awards for his short story and poetry. He enjoys taking naps and eating pasta.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Robert Crisp
The Politics of the Iron Skillet

It has opinions, you know, not to
mention feelings— shame on us
both for not recognizing the amazing
skillet for what it truly is: a thinker,
a maker, but not a mover or shaker.

It’s a blue dog Democrat that love onions
and hash browns, sunning itself on the stove,
holding court with the witless saucepans.
Sometimes, in the cool dark, it murmurs to
the microwave that all is lost and nothing
with sense will ever slouch toward Washington.

The fridge thinks everything is treasonous,
but nothing more so than the iron skillet.

We must protect it, you see. It needs us.

Robert Crisp currently hides out in Savannah, GA, where he teaches English. He writes poetry as often as he can. Learn more at www.writingforghosts.com

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Sang Yun Jee
Work, or Lack Thereof

One who wishes to not do anything,
Or simply cannot do what’s given out.
He trudges through the hardening cement.
He toils on, to separate his feet.
Mosquitos alight upon his caked skin.
His eyelid twitches, only skin and bones,
But trudging on, ignoring all the world,
He looks and acts just like a puttering car.
Having no purpose, but for carrot and stick.
After cement, he finds yet other work,
His skin indistinguishable from the dirt,
The ineptitude overcomes boredom.
I do not cheer for he who is freed from strife,

But weep for things he left behind in life.

Sang Yun Jee‘s poems have been published in the AIPF Youth Anthology and the What Rough Beast feature of Indolent Books. He currently studies as a sophomore in the Philippines, and is the poetry editor for a student-run magazine, The McKinley Review. He received a gold medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Charlene Moskal
Crossroads

They dance, spin, are whirling dervishes,
flames licking at their heels,
naked rebels on the newly dug grave of politics.
They are under a chupa of stars,
bloody stripes, white bandages,
bewildered, betrayed, bedeviled ghosts.
Bare, chthonic limbs fly up, lifted high,
melting in the furious smoke of the dance
before anyone notices they were here.

Shadow voices rendered speechless,
lost in the static of tweets and sound bits.
Mad men and media moguls,
a din of Babylonian proportions;
sanctions, laws, lies, filibusters,
televised interviews,
divisive, arrogant, prideful.
Idealism kicked in the balls,
halved and eaten by power hungry wolves.
Doctrines of hope stripped away, whipped away.
Scars on the backs of peons, slaves,
disenchanted, disillusioned, disenfranchised.

Now at a crossroads, a beggar on a crucifix
hoping for a cup of honesty to drink,
to quench the lies of the past,
to give sustenance to the future.
Still dancing, bared legs, arms stretching,
the rebels reach for sanity, strength to pull down walls
of indifference, of xenophobia.

America, your beauty is there,
masked, sullied under the rouge of pimps.
In dreams I see the mask cracking
like egg white on dead monarch’s faces.
In dreams, America is once again a girl,
café color, eyes green as the oceans.
She skims pebbles in a pond;
each carries a prayer for her future.

Charlene Moskal lives and writes in the vibrant arts community of Las Vegas, Nevada. She has had many arts incarnations but writing has been a constant.
Her poems and prose have been published in: Voices From the Rio Grande; CLARK; Poets of Clark County, Nevada; Legs of Tumbleweed; Wings of Lace, An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women; issues of The Raven’s Perch, Sky Island Journal; and Dash. She will have a chapbook, One Bare Foot, released this May by Zeitgeist Press. She is a fellow of the N.J. Writing Project, works with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, and writes and performs for StorySlam, Las Vegas.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Elizabeth Copeland
WE

We overcome the eddies of gloom
That snag our thoughts in a downward spiral
By radiating possibility

We treat the poison of prevailing apathy
By taking measured, wholehearted action
Towards accessing our collective birthright

In its death throes, the patriarchy
Is exercising its only remaining power
The power to destroy, but

Given time and our willing help
Nature can reclaim her dead spaces
The soil will once again

Hum with the community of living organisms
And the remaining ancient forests will
Stand with us in solidarity

(Fuck the hero’s journey
No one person can save us now)

Elizabeth Copeland is a writer, theatre artist and arts educator who lives in Sackville, N.B. with her husband, musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Her poetry, short stories and personal essays have been published in The Furious Gazelle, Forge Journal, and Circa-A Journal of Historical Fiction, to name a few. Her novella, JAZZ won the 2013 Ken Klonsky Novella Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 ReLit Award. She regularly facilitates creative writing workshops in school and community settings, serving as faculty at such places as the San Miguel Writers Conference and the Knowlton Literary Festival. Elizabeth is the 2018 Writer-in-Residence for Joggins Fossil Cliffs working on a suite of poems that explore what the natural world has to say as we stand on the cliffs edge of environmental and social breakdown. She is currently facilitating a series of community-based workshops called ‘Daring to Hope at the Cliffs Edge’ and is the winner of the 2018 Environmental Leadership Award for her community work.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Nicole Callihan
True Story w/ Groundhog

For years, I have lived in your backyard. Mornings, I eat buttercup and sheep sorrel, timothy and clover. Between your white azaleas, you have witnessed my burrow: it is my life’s work, my only work, my love nest and nursery, my retreat from the storm. Still, you want nothing to do with me. From beneath the star dogwood, you watch your husband shake cayenne pepper into the earth I’ve opened. Under a sky deeper than America, you are silent as he walks the perimeter of the garden, sprinkling blood meal and talcum powder, the soft clippings of your daughter’s blonde hair. I am not just shadow, but body and mother and maker. You, with the voice you were given, could you not speak for me? How dumb you look with your fat human mouth clamped shut. I only wanted what you want: to make it through this terrible time and into a softer season.

Nicole Callihan is the author of Henry River Mill Village (Arcadia Publishing, 2012), co-authored with Ruby Young Kellar; the poetry collection SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014); and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015), co-authored Zoë Ryder White and winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest Award; The Deeply Flawed Human (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016); Downtown (Finishing Line Press 2017); and Aging (Yes, Poetry, 2018). Callihan is assistant director and senior language lecturer at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, and lives in Brooklyn.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.