Susanna Donato
Late Autumn, Family

For the mourners

My redneck uncle
(his term, not mine, though I confess
I have adopted it)

—the one who mounted
a Trump sign the size of a tractor
in his front yard—

so I heard
though I did not see the sign
could not bear to visit for a final goodbye—

has fallen silent
on Facebook after years of hilarity
and by hilarity

I mean photos of snarling
Hillary, and ape memes
of Michelle, of Barack.

Which change of heart
precipitates this silence?
The disasters and the war

threats or memory
of my paratrooper grandfather
or preoccupations?

He has a new puppy
so I hear, I haven’t seen him
since the perfect day

the rain held off,
he said I love you sweetie
at the rocky spot

where men with ropes
gave over to faith’s final gulp
basket ash concrete

confetti and lavender
mixed with soil and the not-tears of men
for she who made us

one rose on the tray
when he brought her breakfast
each morning, so I hear

Susanna Donato is a Denver-based writer whose poems have appeared in Entropy and Columbia, and essays have appeared in Proximity, Okey-Panky, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.susannadonato.com or on Twitter @susannadonato.

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Jonathan Endurance
How Do You Ask Your Body For A Little Vacation

when your body was forced to accept the hurricane
hidden in a man’s voice
you named it a jellyfish learning the waves of the sea

& now your body knows no peace:
it is a jellyfish trapped in a tank of salty water
& a bird carrying the weight of the sky on its wings

your body does not belong to you
it left the day you were forced to swallow a speech of bullet
that formed phlegm of tragedy in your throat
& with every attempt to ask your body for a little vacation
you crumbled into the fist of a hurricane

you wonder how the hell everything tastes
like rusty metal at the tip of your tongue

in the dream
your body wakes into a path of darkness
greeted by the photographs of your dead ones
with their faces drawn into scars

the ruins have worn your body too often
into an old museum

you wonder where to go from here
when the city is a gunfire
living in a man’s voice?

Jonathan has had his work on several journals and anthology which include (but not limited to) Kalahara Review, Coldnoon, Electronic Pamphlet, Brittle Paper, “Spring,The Season of Love”… He is a piece of sweet dark chocolate. He loves football and studies in a still room.
You can say hello on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jonathan.young50
or simply Jonathan Endurance.

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Margo Davis
Banana Phobia

We tried everything
with the new produce clerk,
who cowered in gloves
and apron. I peeled,
quartered, ate with granola.
When I made him pick up
a black ‘n’ bruised one,
he dropped it like a
joy buzzer, bruising its last
bright spot the size of a
code sticker. I tried to pinpoint
what frightened this grown man
transferring in from cold
cuts. Could it be the long
thick skins protecting its
fruit? The stem? Shape?
How some are green and
hard? Being plucked
before hitting one’s prime?
He mouthed inequity
— or was that iniquity?–
then retched on a bunch
poised for banana bread.
I snuck up behind him with
a wee cluster from Hawai’i,
four pocket-sized purple
bananas sweet as apples.
I swear, he said, someday
you too must face what will
undo you. Then he swung
his mallet as if in a horror flick,
pulverizing the wee ones.

Margo‘s more recent poems have appeared in The Fourth River, Ekphrastic Review, Misfit, and Light, and the Houston Chronicle (Fall). Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary (December), Of Burgers and Ballrooms, Untameable City, numerous Texas Poetry Calendars, and Echoes of the Cordillera. A Pushcart nominee awash in Republican mindsets, Margo thrives on closely observing film, photos, and natural settings. She’s known for eavesdropping.

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Devon Balwit
Know

The direction of Paradise isn’t clear.
Pilgrims need savvy. The border patrol agent
offering assistance might duct tape you to a bed.
State security men in neat uniforms might drag you
off campus and beat you until you fit in a trunk.
You might enter your embassy only to emerge
in pieces. That road through the green wood
might flare a maelstrom of cinders. Your roof
might catch and burn. You might walk your shoes
to ruin only to be turned back at the border
or worse. In your head, the 91st psalm: I will not fear
the terror of night, nor the pestilence that stalks
in the darkness. The elderly professor repeats it
on the subway platform after being knocked down
by a commuter. Or, spared the arrow that flies by day
and the Slough of Despond, even the alluring may entrap,
a Vanity Fair of gewgaws, each with its secret chip
listening in. Pilgrim, you also listen in. You’ll hear
a small heartbeat—hope—steady as a sonogram,
even though as yet, you can feel no movement.
Know that, within you, Paradise gestates.

Devon Balwit is the author of A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Poets Reading the News, The NewVerse News, The Ekphrastic Review, Peacock Journal, and more. For more of her poetry, reviews, collections, and chapbooks, visit her website, devonbalwitpoet.

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Marc Sheehan
Barn, Collapsed

It’s neither your barn
nor your collapse,
so why should you care

that the roof now covers
rubble neatly
as if a demolitions expert

planted perimeter charges
to implode it only
after the ghost of the gentle

poet Issa evacuated the last
owl, field mouse,
and litter of feral cats.

But say the barn is the country.
Then isn’t the barn yours,
as well as the collapse? No,

because then you’d have some say
in where the owls and mice
and cats and gentleness went. No,

only the caring is yours.

Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two full-length poetry collections —— Greatest Hits (New Issues Press) and Vengeful Hymns (Ashland Poetry Press), and a chapbook of poems, Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review). He has published stories, poems, essays and reviews in numerous literary magazines including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His flash fiction has been featured on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction series as well as on the program Selected Shorts. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.

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Mike Nichols
What Comes aRound Goes Around

I told her, Practice
these words with me
and you will have enough
Spanish to find work
when we cross the
border into Mexico.

At the guard tower they fired
bullets at our feet and cried,
No hay trabajo aqui.

Mike L. Nichols is a graduate of Idaho State University and a recipient of the Ford Swetnam Poetry Prize. He lives and writes in Eastern Idaho. Look for his poetry in Rogue Agent, Scryptic Magazine, Ink&Nebula, Plainsongs Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more at mikenicholsauthor.com

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Marc Sheehan
Minor Late Empire Diversions

High bright cumulus clouds share the sky
with gulls, as in that painting by Constable,
hanging in this museum of the moment.

The plastic back-porch table,
pierced by a tropical-print umbrella,
keeps slanting Michigan sun at bay.

Shade shifts as daylight
achieves zenith. Croquet balls dot the lawn.
A sweaty gin and tonic is precisely

the right kind of late empire diversion –
the bottle sporting Victoria’s portrait,
quinine curing diseases creeping

a little closer to home every year.

Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two full-length poetry collections —— Greatest Hits (New Issues Press) and Vengeful Hymns (Ashland Poetry Press), and a chapbook of poems, Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review). He has published stories, poems, essays and reviews in numerous literary magazines including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His flash fiction has been featured on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction series as well as on the program Selected Shorts. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.

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Susanna Donato
Sessions (a playlist)

In session,
woman reads woman
free exercise
of the vote
senator from Utah
picks
his nose

I shuffle:
whether
you’re Donald
Trump or
an anarchist

dent-bumpered
cars stock gutters
bent steel
sticker-plastered
scrapes

I shuffle:
girls are
someone to tell
my problems
to girls are
look at them where
is the
celebration?

a gutter-pumpkin
beneath a tire
not a pumpkin
a squirrel
so fat I laugh
fat as decapitation
pregnant squirrel
naked worm-babies
in fat squirrel-belly
squirrel compelled
to love them
not love
feed, guard, grow
helpless
we love
our own skin

I shuffle:
What is right
in my life
I get drunk
every night

I shuffle:
Rip her to shreds
She gets up
from all fours
Rip her up
She gets up

She gets up
 

Susanna Donato is a Denver-based writer whose poems have appeared in Entropy and Columbia, and essays have appeared in Proximity, Okey-Panky, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.susannadonato.com or on Twitter @susannadonato.

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Julene Tripp Weaver
Nightmare Presidency

Our current president
with his team, terrorizes me.
What I say to soothe myself:
this too shall pass,
the tide will swing,
the children will grow up and vote.
I do my best to keep my hope, keep
faith in the nuances, the small hammers
with beating hearts. Let more of us refuse
to say his name, refuse the trauma,
recognize our imperative
to keep ourselves sane,
not collapse in vain.

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA. She has a chapbook and two full size collections. Her latest, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, published by Finishing Line Press, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and won the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards. Her work is online at The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Voices in the Wind, Antinarrative Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, MadSwirl, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice, you can find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

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Margo Davis
Appropriate

I love the dodge, ruse, subterfuge,
the something of yours which will be mine.
Nothing personal, always business,
someone else’s, which quickens my pulse
like some employer rushing to deal
with a thief, this little thief,
my throbbing head jam-packed
with the best pilfered goodies I don’t need.
Well, the mind is overpowering.
Just tell yourself you have already
been in, your ticket misplaced.
Match the inviting smile, slow a bit, that’s
disarming. They advance only if
you speed through or tense up.
Glide and woo, it’s a shoe-in.
Claim the best seat in someone else’s
house. Heart. Pocketbook. Bank
account. Let them entertain you.

Margo‘s more recent poems have appeared in The Fourth River, Ekphrastic Review, Misfit, and Light, and the Houston Chronicle (Fall). Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary (December), Of Burgers and Ballrooms, Untameable City, numerous Texas Poetry Calendars, and Echoes of the Cordillera. A Pushcart nominee awash in Republican mindsets, Margo thrives on closely observing film, photos, and natural settings. She’s known for eavesdropping.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.