Michael Stalcup
The Wound

I have seen the wound of a people
Stretched wide
And the honored physicians
Shaking their heads
In disgust

That they would even be invited
To stoop down
To consider
To enter in
To believe

Offended at the mere suggestion
That the messy truth
Is worth more
Than their frail
Power

Michael Stalcup is a Thai-American missionary working with college students in Bangkok, Thailand, where he lives with his wife and three children. His poems have appeared in Inheritance Magazine, Poets Reading the News, and Faithfully Magazine. You can find him at his website michaelstalcup.blogspot.com or on Twitter @stalcupojoy.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Kathleen Cook
Apply conservatively or liberally, as needed, to all disaffected areas,

sez the doc, to me, (credulous, attentive untutored)
Putabitoftheointment onthetipofyourmiddlefinger,
mixwiththecream (what cream?) using yourindexdab
freelymayuseyour secondandfourth.  Reschedule
insixweeksor wheneverwarrantyexpires.
Medicare, Supplemental?  Nothing?
How did you get in here?
Get lost.  Good Luck.
exits doc rapidly

dice el maestro de espanol, a mi, (credulous, attentive,
untutored) It’s a matter of mood.  If you are happy,
despondent, even fearful, and another person is involved,
he or she changes to the subjunctive.  Easy to do:  er/ir to ar
plus personal ending, don’t forget stem cells, but of course
if  you’ve gone into the past, must be-ara.
If you are alone, you can’t change
anybody.  Suerte.  Hasta luego.
maestro sale por la puerta.

sez the prez to me, (incredulous, inattentive, now-schooled)
Take a man at his word.  (A woman, too, I suppose?)
Innocent until  I say he’s guilty, disloyal, or scum.
My man is great!  I am great!
(A great silence falls on the land as televisions are muted
from sea to shining sea, Omaha to Onalaska.)
He never did any of those things!
I never did any of those things!
I run to recheck my voter registration, worn to a pale yellow tatter.

Kathleen Cook is a life-long resident of South Texas. She has enjoyed writing for all purposes since childhood. She completed advanced degrees in German language and literature and enjoyed a rewarding career as a teacher. In retirement, she has again taken up study of Spanish, and delights in gardening. The rich joys and sorrows of family and community intersect with urban and Texas-countryside settings in her writing. She has been published in Mutabilis, Dos Gatos, and Lamar University anthologies.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Amanda Forrester
Blowback

I see your point
loaded
in my face
spring action, actionable

I see your point: how
in the old days, this is how it was done:
meet me in the street

with double barrels pointing
down, staring each other down
like “Bitch, what are you looking at?”

I see your pointedness
your sharp blindness
to change, to betterment

like there’s a three-day
waiting period—what more
do you need?

You’re so busy looking
behind you, in the rear
view mirror for that chip
on your shoulder that

you miss the blood.

Amanda Forrester’s creative work has appeared in the Sandhill Review. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa and lives in Dade City, Florida.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Mike Nichols
Cold War

Before Putin hacked our grid we’d watch
movies endlessly with our cheap electricity.

Stories kept us numb. Our lifeless eyes
displayed less intelligence than the animals

whose flesh we’d masticate against the flickering
blue light. There once was a telekinetic kid named

Sid, and in the movie time travel existed. Unlike the kid,
my anger contains no power. But if I beg, might He

at least send His thoughts and prayers.

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

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Shannon Lippert
Insomniac Season

There are weights dug into your skin.
But you are used to them now, though every once in a while
they catch
on something in the room, something on the news,
what’s wrong with a little less meat on your bones? You wonder.
There’s a time for such worries; there’s a period where wakefulness
is a little like sleeping
without the respite. Someone standing in your corners—
By that, I mean, of course, the corners of your eyes.

Tastes like a pound of wadded up fabric
and have you ever heard of spring so hot
or wait, is it,
November—without all the holidays,
just attrition beside the carcasses
And through it all you find yourself yawning.
This uncertain, dreamlike occasion
with all the music you can hear, just underwater
so the songs come out all twisted up and vague
and did you hear what he said today, did you see—oh.

How could you with all the sleep stuck in your eyes?
It could never be washed away, not with a million sunsets.
Today is like walking through thunder, for a second it’s paralyzing, chaotic, and afterwards
it’s kind of lonely without it, kind of strange
to think of this raw energy as a companion. But you can feel it in your bones forever:
Exhausting.
Like a car without proper ventilation,
the wheels spinning on, through nothing, brick on the gas
while everything slowly turns airless
and that’s when you try to breathe.

Shannon Lippert is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in episode 55 of the Glittership podcast, and has been published in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Doug Van Hooser
inflammation red and bruise blue

I want to get in your face
words on my fingertip
jab your chest
where your heart carries on
its lonesome task
your ears waxy
with opinion
myopic eyes
can’t see tomorrow
belief a flood
your tongue paddles whitewater rapids
over the rocks of common sense
always at the door a wolf
everything is a dark cave
rabid bats never question themselves

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.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Alise Versella
In Defense of My Existence

Philomela was raped
And before she could bring
A kingdom to his knees
King Tereus cut out her tongue

They wish they could sever a tongue from this hellish mouth

The gods turned her into a nightingale
Like somehow flight would save her

Not like every time young girls first learn to fly
Learn the broad range of their wings and the length of their shadow
Only to have those great wings bound
Oh how
I’ve had enough of someone pinning my wings down

In nature the only sound
Of the nightingale
Comes from the mouth of the male
The gods did Philomela no favor

You must learn as a woman to become your own savior

Philomela’s sister served King Tereus his own son
On a platter
Penance for the wrong he’d done

We will serve you your future sons on a platter with our blood
For we deserve a future better than the seeds you’ve sown
And I will not sink silently into the mud
I will not go quietly
You won’t drown out this voice in a flood
Every time a hawk screams or a crow
Or a banshee on your war fields
Know
Every splitting fiber in the marrow of your bones
Was felt by a woman first
You will no longer bury our severed tongues in the dirt

Philomela will not be reduced to myth
She will stand testament
To history
Until a new story
Takes precedence

Alise Versella is Pushcart nominated for her work with Women’s Spiritual Poetry. Kirkus has called her…”[A] boundlessly energetic and promising technician [who] crafts a unique blend of the symbolist and the confessional; a talented, promising newcomer.” She is a contributing writer for Rebelle Society and has been featured on online journals such as Elephant, Entropy, and Ultraviolettribe</em. She resides as coffee enthusiast and dessert queen, performing at various local cafes and libraries along the Jersey Shore.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Sarah Caulfield
Service with a Smile

He comes by every afternoon on the dot. The clock turns three and he steps through the door.
He’s slow. We have his order ready by the time he makes it to the counter, but we listen to what
He says anyway. The electronic till beeps. Cash jingles. Exact change. Every time,
I wonder who else he has to talk to, as each day I watch him eat alone
Out of the corner of my eyes. Nearby, I clean tables. Wipe up salt. We never speak.
It’s been, what, five years? More?
I still can’t hear the sound of deep-fat fryers without imagining him —
The quiet of his silhouette, as though cut out of paper and pasted down. Years pass, and
Here I am, trying to write with the idea that no one is listening, even though
I still want them to be listening. I ache for regard. Ambition’s a bitch.
Words melt to putty in my mouth, pinned by my jawbone.
I am waiting to suit someone else. They’re just words.
Can I take your order, sir? I spit them up sour. We are all in the gutter.
I doze. Drowse. Repeat. Wait for morning.
I have fifteen minutes for break. In the car park, I turn my face up to the sky.
And I breathe. Take shape. Let fly.

Sarah Caulfield is the author of Spine (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Voicemail Poems, The Griffin, and The Mays (XXIV). She has lived in the UK, Poland and Germany, and currently lives in Japan.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Amanda Forrester
patriarchal residue

I suffer from historical hysteria
sponsored by men who explored
and discovered
the wandering uterus
which means I need an orgasm

to control my outbursts
my vagina is a sheath for a sword
my clitoris should be hidden from view
with this, I can’t be trusted
this is why I need to be controlled
I am dirty with residue

sew me up stitch code so I am clean
and faithful
remove my uterus and implant it in
my husband, I can’t be trusted to carry
remove my breasts with their milk glands
I can’t be trusted to feed

remove my ovaries and their unborn half babies
give them to the rich for implantation
remove my soul for sacrifice to god
of the first world

give me the death
I need to have

Amanda Forrester’s creative work has appeared in the Sandhill Review. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa and lives in Dade City, Florida.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.