Bruce Robinson
Malice in Four Thoughts
They didn’t see it coming
(how could they?)
And then it rained, rained
and we weren’t witness
so we can only surmise
that the days grew shorter
and who’s to say that clocks
could demonstrate a direction
and there was nothing
one could do about it
(which is what we did)
Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Panoply, and Pangyrus.
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Marjorie Moorhead
Walking With the Wind
Walking with the wind today
all the Autumn leaves are in play;
whether shake-dancing on their branches,
or dry rustling on the ground.
Those once red, yellow, gold,
now browned;
mixing with pine needles in a brew
mapping out patterns best discerned
from above, by geese who flew by
on their way to southern spots.
A bit like the Haves, who leave behind
the Have Nots for warmer climes
when a chill sets in. Soon, those
havens will be gone. Luxury bungalow
playgrounds swallowed up by swells
and surges. Atlantis created
by consumerist urges.
Walking with the wind today
grey and white bands of cloud in play,
criss crossing a pale blue sky; bright
with the telephone wires lit true,
glittering so beautifully in a spotlight,
displayed in their best light,
as only the sun’s rays can do.
Marjorie Moorhead‘s poetry can be found in the online sites/journals What Rough Beast, HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. She has poems in two anthologies: A Change of Climate (12/2017, edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson to benefit The Environmental Justice Foundation), and Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT, Vol.II (4/2018, edited by Alice Wolf Gilborn, et al. for The Blueline Press). Forthcoming in 2019 is a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, and a collection with 4th Friday Poets (Hobblebush). Marjorie is an AIDS survivor, mother of two, and is nestled in northern New England, near the NH/VT border.
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Margo Davis
Catch me
staring a beat too long
along the nape of her stem-slim neck
at the crimson imprint of his rough hands. I swallow,
slow my pace behind them.
No must be what she had moaned,
no in the face of this hurricane idling, its velocity hovering
along the gulf between them. A gale force grips
what it can
and won’t let go.
In a moment I relive where she stands, his hand, my man’s,
all men’s, gripping my neck
a bit too hard, forceful.
She looks away
to catch her reflection in plate glass, flushing deep as
the stain he has made on her. I feel
light-headed as she studies
her reflection.
What surprised me then, now, how we pretend
that calm will prevail somehow, if only
we weather it.
Our eyes meet in the glass.
No, not this palpable pressure where one hell-bent headwind
could crack all that’s intact. I pull back, swallow,
look down as he swells,
gathering momentum.
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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Bruce Robinson
Super Moon
Soon there will be beaujolais nouveau
parties, le beaujolais nouveau
est arrivé, at Bleu Provence (the
moon says so) and we will pair
wine with cheese, now pare
the cheese with data
and we will parse the bullet
we did not dodge and that tracks
its way around a calendar, now
isn’t that just like a moon, no reason
to believe me, not really,
took us long enough, like a celestial
stone that’s had it up to here
<Your connection was interrupted An
internet change was detected>
with its relationship the moon
lumes large tonight, well, happens all the time,
even here in this country where hundreds
of thousands and yes we’re still counting
died so that others could covet property,
was their ardor aspirational,
and those who survived persisted
as did their children, and, all right,
you get the drift, which from all appearances
continues to persist, our tidal messiness,
which, and we shouldn’t like to hear this,
is possibly our strength but tonight
just fails to seem so, even by the light
or, well, despite the light, of a beleaguered moon.
Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Panoply, and Pangyrus.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
Walter Holland
The truth is a form of radical resistance
Facts validating facts are a form of heady
resistance. These ward off insinuation and
the strange deflections that occur by sewing
disinformation with a thick contagion of
doubt, accusations, provocation and the whole
assault on reality. Let’s face it, honesty has been
the saintly gold-standard: Joan of Arc was burned
at the stake for allegiance to her God, and Galileo
imprisoned for obedience to Reason and
the primacy of the Sun. The actions of hearsay,
gossip, and slander, are the odious supporters
of lies. Supposed conspiracies, revisionist zealotry
from Stalin to Mao; all to propel the despotic
dictates, the rat-a-tat-tat of extermination,
genocidal purging, and human contempt. But
the wellspring of Truth runs deep, its aquifers
sate each dried and thirsting mind, transforming
the most recalcitrant into a fruitful knowing.
Walter Holland, Ph.D., is the author of three books of poetry including A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (Magic City Press, 1992), Transatlantic, (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), and Circuit (Chelsea Station Editions, 2010) as well as a novel, The March (Masquerade Books, 1996 and Chelsea Station Editions 2011). He collaborated on the book and lyrics for a musical based on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, which was staged at the 2017 Florida Festival of New Musicals. Some of his poetry credits include: Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Poets for Life: 76 Poets Respond to AIDS, Rhino, Hazmat, The Cimarron Review, and About Place Journal. He lives in New York City. He writes reviews for Pleiades and Lambdaliterary.org. Follow him at: walterhollandwriter.com
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Leland Seese
“The ceremony of innocence…”
— W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Decency, with forethought, fled the onslaught, frightened
hare determined to outrun the conflagration. Another summer,
half the continent on fire,
the other half, half-man, half-wild boar unleashed
to rampage for red meat throughout the grange halls,
rodeo arenas, and convention centers in a state debased
by aspirations to depravity.
Arise, a plague of hatchlings in the cycle of their spawn,
rounding years and decades, our quiet certitude, penned
in articles and declaration, preamble and amendment,
leaving us somnambulistic with success
in all the matters of our living that, in the final
judgment, mean the less — hegemony and privilege,
lingua franca of oppressors in pressed suits, Beach
Boy dreams of endless summer, fossil fueled across
the living harvests captured from the shithole countries.
Arise, O scaly beasts and beat the armored wings
of your conceit, beat the shrying women, malignant
children from the south, whom you see slithering
their infestation into schools and playgrounds, tell
the mouthy men, Go back to Univision! Indeed, The best
lack all conviction, leveraging control of women
and their own portfolios for a mess of potage. Or waiting
like the audience to the sacrifice of Kitty Genovese,
surely someone else will make the call, or slap down
the result of sedulous investigation as if it were the
Queen of Hearts.
Meanwhile, lifting from the ground like the undead
arise the hatchlings of the cursed cycle, genitalia dangling
unashamed and thrusting, whose creed
is overturning, out-maneuvering, signing with the blood
of others their Horse-Thief Covenant, as that rough beast
from which we thought we were protected slouches
toward our shore.
Leland Seese’s poems appear in The MacGuffin, Juked, The Stonecoast Review, and other journals. He and his wife live in Seattle with a revolving cast of foster, adopted, and bio children.
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Mike Nichols
Humanity was saved
by the next plague.
The gluttonous use of resources ceased.
Humans huddle dirty in their dark family
enclaves and recall meaningless bygone things:
Packed tight second lane from the right
rolling home at ten MPH to
Binge watch streaming TV.
Tonguing the clotted orange
Cheeto dust from all five fingers.
Consider buying bigger jeans.
Believing that we are the center of the universe.
Thinking God does love us.
Recall the faces of the dead.
Invite them into this dancing circle
of candlelight. Unafraid, because the dead carry
no diseases — only glad tidings.
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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Bruce Robinson
Field Notes on the American Eagle
I could tell you about eagles. Absolutely,
the national bird, whose gimlet eyes
latch on to facts on the ground
whose art veers toward the interstices
of talk and action, the parallel lines
that only meet through an echolocation
that we, that’s right, that’s us
on the ground, are privileged
to behold in wonder and amaze,
as did the Greeks, all talk
and no action, of antiquity,
as did other losers, native
liabilities, but I digress,
let me tell you, someday soon
I’ll tell you about eagles,
and you’ll be amazed.
You really will.
Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Panoply, and Pangyrus.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
Doug Van Hooser
Politician
What he said he meant to say
when you weren’t listening.
Just an echo that would fade.
All march to the money drummer.
Fair means you have something I want.
Free means there is a hand in your pocket.
Trillion is the new billion
which once was the new million.
Twitter is a news conference.
Reporters are manikins.
The truth is never black and white,
it’s red and blue.
Gray is in solitary confinement.
Speech is clarified butter on their tongue,
the course of history a dry riverbed.
Legislation requires chess moves
so the pols play checkers.
The goal: get kinged.
Always reorganizing their bankruptcy
they never emerge from Chapter Eleven.
Simply borrow from their heirs
and park in the handicap spot
with someone else’s placard.
Their wisdom measured in bluster,
a wind that ransacks common sense’s pockets.
They mint one-sided coins that never land face down.
The past and the future have no roof, live in regret.
The algorithm never searches there.
Some define election as choice
but it is a cherry orchard
on a bright, sunlit day
in the middle of winter
when one stays inside eating summer’s preserves.
Doug Van Hooser‘s poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Manhattanville Review, and Poetry Quarterly, among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Crack the Spine, and Light and Dark. Doug is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions and Chicago Dramatists Theatre.
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Margo Davis
Keep It Light
He came as he pleased,
air parting so that light could bathe
him wherever he went,
washing out every fact before,
beyond, and near him
then poof!
he would fade and evade,
leaving a cut-out
in the atmosphere until the crowds
or reporters pushed
floodlights in that direction
to fill an enormous gap.
When he surfaced elsewhere,
he would nudge the air to make way
for throngs, accommodating
for presence then
absence, which we came to expect,
even when he stood there,
the void shifting to muted
promise, from indifference to
the soft grope inviting
nightfall.
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.