John Johnson
Presidential Election Sestina

Jimmy Carter is the underwater incumbent running for re-election.
Double digit inflation and the Iran hostage crisis places the country at a crossroads.
Ronald Reagan’s quip “There You Go Again” wins him the debate.
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” the resonant ad.
A landslide victory across 44 states elects a new president.
Optimism and a new political coalition the outcome of the campaign.
 
Character issues dog Bill Clinton during a 1992 campaign.
But a millionaire third party candidate paves the way for a Democratic win in the election.
The Southern governor who “feels your pain” trumps the out-of-touch incumbent president.
Economic struggle and a war in the Persian Gulf puts the country at the crossroads.
“Read My Lips, No New Taxes” a broken promise turned into a scathing ad.
Pocket book issues and a Dana Carvey inspiring performance loses the debate.
 
George W. Bush, the every-man, is more likeable than the know-it-all Al Gore in the first debate.
Compassionate conservatism challenges the status quo of a vibrant economic campaign.
But vice-presidential “guilt-by-association” with presidential scandal fatigue creates a damaging ad.
Nonetheless, on voting day, a disputed popular vote in the election.
“Florida! Florida! Florida!” puts our nation at the crossroads.
We wait several months for the Supreme Court to declare our next president.
 
Barack Obama historically elected the first black president!
And we mistakenly think the country has moved past post-racial debate.
Greatest economic crisis in a century places the nation at the crossroads.
John McCain, a maverick war hero, can’t effectively campaign.
Youth turnout and wave of African American support seals the election
“Hope and Change” a rallying cry in the lasting election ad.
 
A reality TV show for over a decade is the ultimate campaign ad.
No one really takes this clown seriously—He can never be president.
Yet the rude awakening on the morning after the election.
Circus stunts with Clinton accusers and Access Hollywood mar the debate.
The hopes of breaking the last glass ceiling for women smashed by the campaign.
Who realized “Making America Great Again” would put the country at the crossroads?
 
2020 places the country yet again at the crossroads.
Coronavirus, economic despair, and endless chaos are the real-life ad.
The side show circus of mismanagement and Twitter insanity are the campaign.
Biden harkening back to a time of civility and orderliness in a president.
An aggressive Trump who will not change angry and infected at the debate.
And yet liberals terrified that a man 16 points down can still win the election.
 
History always has us at the crossroads as we elect a new president.
Yet the current situation seems incapable of being captured in a single ad or debate.
A campaign for safety, sanity, and democracy is on the ballot in this election.

—Submitted on 10/11/2020

AuthorsName

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Adam Coday
Wars

My toy soldiers are stiff and plastic,
but yours can run and jump. How impressive.

You call them Jack and they holler back, though,
and they sometimes wince, while mine shine

unwavered, same as the day they came, their bows
and ribbons strewn about the room, like shrapnel.

When my men break, I can paste them
or replace them, but yours are a special kind—

they take nine months to make.

When they’re done, you waste them
as though it only took a day, and you trade them

as though their flesh were legal tender
and your face had been stamped upon them, boastful.

You measure power in piss, and how you wreak
from the stench of it, that steady flow of ambrosia

pouring through your fists: your God-like hands
performing miracles, making water as you whine.

There’s not a man alive who hasn’t felt divine
a time or two. We all have our good days.

But as sure as my eye blinks, you’re naked
and you’ll serve mushrooms that sear the skies, white

and hot on my dinner plate; cruel and abrupt, the annihilation.

It’s only a matter of time before I lie
in piles, grey and pyroclastic, being scattered.

I hear you’ll take it upon yourself to let me die
unlike your demons: foreign to you, like language.

Now, the dawn breaks over hills and brick churches.
Our planes have chimneys, spilling smoke and blood that stains.

—Submitted on 10/08/2020

Adam Coday‘s poems have appeared in Lucky Jefferson, From Whispers to Roars, and The Silent World in Her Vase. He can be followed on Instagram @hunterandgrove.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Chelsea Balzer
Compost

I’m trying to remember
when I first realized
the eroticism
of compost.

just this morning I
left the kitchen for
moments and
came back to find that
the flies had fucked out
a new army, birthed in the
festering berries.

a domestic emergency I,
still in my underwear,
carried the basket at once
to the shit heap where
the best mushrooms grow.

it bloomed beneath
my hands and I
felt the singe of recognizing
a thing is more
alive than you.

maybe the real question is
when did I learn that
arousal is less about
the touching of genitals

and more about
coming upon something
and with your whole body sensing
            its power?

—Submitted on 10/08/2020

Chelsea Balzer‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Yes Poetry, Plainsongs, Okay Donkey, Cigar City, Elephant Journal, and other journals. Thought Catalog, Omaha Magazine, and more. Her book A Pity Party Is Still a Party is forthcoming from Harper Wave. A therapist, Balzer is founder of Big Feels Lab, an organization empowering people to heal together. Follow her on instagram @theconnectionartist.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Herbert T. Abelson
Sing America (a choked voice after Whitman)

I cannot sing America—
where would I begin?
in the East, West
North, South—
in the red States or blue States,
on the coasts, mountains,
in cities, towns or burgs?

I must breathe deep to sing
to plead for life
in America the Beautiful
even in the midst of this pandemic 

I want to sing America
with reverence and respect
I want to sing loud and long
to America’s heart,
to all the American People, but
I cannot find them—where are they?
—the good people on both sides,
the people who demand
equality, opportunity, fairness, justice?

Where are the people
anxious to address melting ice, forest fires,
hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, famine,
the worsening warming disaster, 
the decline in quality of the air we try to breathe?

There is a rich song,
and a poor dirge,
is there no key for middle ground?


I desperately want to sing America, 
to join the birdsong, the crickets, the tree frogs,
all of God’s children, who sing to honor the promise,
the striving, the pain, the struggle, the love,
the tears, the toil, the last full measure
that all men are created equal,

but my voice is mute,
my limbs immobile, 
my thoughts blank.

My dear country, now a stranger,
ripped asunder, foreign, frightening.
I don’t feel safe—sounds are dissonant, harsh,
voices ugly, where is the beauty of my country ‘tis of thee?
Where is the sweet land of liberty?

I want to sing renewal, hope, inclusion, respect,
sweet visions of promise for future opportunity and freedom.
Singing to the choir is out of tune as frustration grows—so much
greed, division, derision, coursing through our Country; our future a howling
dissonance, divided, ruled by fabrication, confabulation; the fiat of fools.

Conspiracies reign bound with half-truths and outright lies to
tie my vocal cords.

I can’t sing.

I can barely breathe.

—Submitted on 10/07/2020

Herbert T. Abelson is a retired academic physician, husband, father, and grandfather who writes prose and poetry about a grand career and life.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Amanda White
Pharmacopoeia

Mental pandemonium in a prescribed capsule,
a bittersweet pill of house, offspring and occasionally
Father comprising the isolated wide world.
Mandated holding cell with the hot
breath of a Southern summer.

Crowds dispersed by fumigation,
like insects inhabiting a suburban lawn.
Poison seeps from woodland flora,
enforcing a lockdown also on the isolated copse.
Cocktails of Appalachian aloe and distilled ethanol.

Humidity creates adhesive facial coverings
worn religiously during essential excursions.
Townspeople with present-day pitchforks
prod at the faithless mask that
second amendment prayers will not remedy.

Conversations become conversion campaigns.
Friends who were once family have now transfigured,
forcing interventions of fewer than six feet.
Evangelizing that the concealing of nose and mouth must equal
Liberal doses of relapsing.

Pray to party dictates or cover yourself.
The pharmaceuticals of a country United,
overdosing on Liberty.

—Submitted on 10/07/2020

Amanda White is a reader, writer, and traveler currently living in Nashville, Tenn., with her husband and three rogue boys. She has a master’s in literature focusing on poetry and folklore.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Hanna Pachman
Six Feet Close

My roommate has become ill.
Must wash doorknobs and faucets,
lay down in room, replay
eight-month-old break-up.

Try to get out of bed without tears.
Must preserve tissues and toilet paper.

The sound of coughing
makes me anxious,
as I feel the liquid fossilize
into my upper back.

I try to get words out of me
pushing against five stacks of books
while shouting hello to strangers.

My head is spinning towards everyone
who makes eye contact with me,
wondering if they have the light
of a cozy apartment to walk in and out of,

to sip tea in with the simplicity
of the open trees and moving books.

I digest the gaping news of death,
wondering how I could talk to people
without scaring them away.

Take a ten-minute dance break from work
to bake cookies from childhood,
walk outside in pajamas with no bra,
feel the space within the space of my hips.

Declutter the grim reaper
from my head, as blank roads of houses
become actual people.

Feeling my shoulders relax
inward and outward,
I sway through the in-between
world of unleashing and manic.

—Submitted on 10/06/2020

Hanna Pachman‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Oddball Magazine, and Aberration Labyrinth. Originally from Connecticut, she lives in Los Angeles, where she hosts a monthly poetry event, “Beatnik Cafe,” and is an assistant editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Hanna Pachman
Invisible Spiders

Online dating is a burgundy cave,
full of old dicks and new age pigs ready to
spread their bones like ghosts.

It took me a while to learn how
to live with brain fog.

My smile starts with shaking skeletons,
before I press on the breaks like a mad man.

I state that I’m taking Covid-19 seriously in my bio.
Smaller spiders can survive higher falls.

People are drunkenly cascading the streets
on the weekend nights, like Vegas.

My sound collapses onto your furrowed expression,
as you try to figure out what kind of alien I am.

It has been exactly two days since
I have stalked my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.

Wolves dancing in Egypt force
their way into my brain, as I try to talk to you
about my lack of confidence.

Politely, I ask an avatar
every place he has been
in the last 6 months.

Spiders have excellent eye-sight,
they use their webs to think.

Wanting more leaps of departed hahas,
I tickle you with nervousness
expanding at the great wall of solitude.

The sinking starts at my chest
and lingers like a fly circling chocolate cake
as I take another bite of trying to hear you.

I spy group photos taken as recently as
during the global pandemic.

A spasm through my back reminds me
it has been enough time smiling today.

Chronic pain is hard to see through,
like a past lover’s imprint
bleeding on your forehead.

Dating apps are a reminder that the world
doesn’t understand invisible illnesses.

No echoes against my stomach,
pressing beside the pure agony of
burning bricks, rocking me
back and forth on the ground.

I hope my vibrator doesn’t
keep me up too late tonight.

—Submitted on 10/06/2020

Hanna Pachman‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Oddball Magazine, and Aberration Labyrinth. Originally from Connecticut, she lives in Los Angeles, where she hosts a monthly poetry event, “Beatnik Cafe,” and is an assistant editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Hanna Pachman
Try Not to Kiss Strangers

A rug smears across the heart,
as I watch a bare faced man
smirk at me, with devilish eyes.

The news is imminent,
you are not allowed to cough
without having a tissue on hand.

My eyes shift to my innocence
not prevailing through this hourglass
where colors of light are
nourished by smoke.

I must accept that I won’t accomplish
kissing him tonight.

A deep hole empties my stomach
as I get lost in a white wall of silence,
staring at my overly sanitized hands.

I stand on my hand to stretch,
remembering that the mat
will be pulled out from beneath
me at any moment.

I hold tightly onto my mask,
as the wind walks me outside.

I will watch him on the street,
paused at that corner by the stop sign,
until there are enough hospital beds
for the world to bathe in,

until the day I could clean my house
without being afraid to die.

But once the world is vaccinated,
I will run to the stop sign,
get down on one knee
and beg for him to kiss me.

—Submitted on 10/06/2020

Hanna Pachman‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Oddball Magazine, and Aberration Labyrinth. Originally from Connecticut, she lives in Los Angeles, where she hosts a monthly poetry event, “Beatnik Cafe,” and is an assistant editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Victoria Ruiz
Shroud

Until the night falls smoke
in flame-
fires lit in matrimonious
howl

and media is no longer
the only source
you see-
may then,
your voice
burn revolution

Say the names-
The Father
The Son.
Our daughters.
Say them until it beats
inferno from your
twelfth story
post while you bring

your deepest indignations
around to the front yard- polar
and captured while truth
chokes your breath.

And the tear
gas,
milk
looters
bus in white
Texas plate
pick-ups-
forward
into
crowd.

This is our america-
twelfth story
proud.

—Submitted on 10/02/2020

Victoria Ruiz holds a BFA in art from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a studio specialization in painting. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their twin sons. This is her first poetry publication.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Ana Maria Spagna
If in What’s Left

if in what's left you should find me in the tangle 		of what's been cut clean     
of what too-long braced the wind	 or too-straight skyward shot    

if in the midday sun	you hear a breathed-beat    that steady as ragged prayers 
sorted and stacked         dangles orange as twine 	  sky-strung to taunt the robins 	

nesting despite		nesting they must

if as you crawl the ditches	of what's left  	you feel what nimble scruff 	
steadies this body	a snow-mashed nest or an apple halved for jays 	

to peck and launch	skyward again	   if in this untangling	
you bleed small   where once you stumbled	where now you straighten 
	
what's been severed	by a kind of nurture

then do we gather	 to bundle tightly 	what's been learned 
so it can be burned again	cold ash burned		

where will you   with what gloved-hands  with what distant 
thunder     where will you meet me 	we who listen 

who clear which way  	 once cleared to go

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of the prose works Uplake (University of Washington Press, 2018), Reclaimers (University of Washington Press, 2015), Potluck (Oregon State University Press, 2011), Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus (Bison Books, 2010), and Now Go Home (Oregon State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Pilgrimage, North Dakota Quarterly, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Spagna lives in a remote town in the North Cascades of Washington State. 

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.