Bette Jane Camp
The Great Going
By ruby jones

(THE CASTLE) —

Gargoyles. He starts to giggle
when he sees them,
grunting out of elevators
to the top.

Gallons of gray later, he
reaches the edge. He can hear
the graphs of his followers
below.

He huddles back, pulls out his vow
to galvanize
the grave-laying
men.

And then,
glibly:
“Greatness!”
“Mine’s a power
not graying,” he barks, “but
“glowing.”

He gives way not to “the gatekeepers”,
golden and gauging, beside him, but to
those “on the ground,
those hit
by the guidelines,”—
the guidelines
being the trees, which he gouged out
some granite
ago,
to where greatness
will be always
going.

So
grounding will his time be as
a gargoyle
that he’ll guard the castle
with the gap
between
him
and his ghost.

Ruby Jones is grandmother of 26, immigrant and volunteer reporter. She sits on the village council and in the director’s chair during Town Musical season (2008–present).

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Bette Jane Camp’s poems appear or are forthcoming in FORTH Magazine, Blind Glass Magazine and the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation. She hails from Mukilteo, Washington and currently lives and works in Vermont.

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Eileen Tabios
From The Ashbery Riff-Offs
—where each poem begins with 1 or 1-2 lines from “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” by John Ashbery

Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Euclidean Geometry

That the history of creation proceeds according to
stringent laws is a reality difficult to accept. No
doubt this explains widespread amnesia among
those resolute in trusting the merits of control
I cite “merit” which assumes a priori the factual
existence of control, when it is actually warped
illusion—therein lies (pun intended) the human
conundrum: we are insects within a universe whose
eye turns at random to our hairy tibia wriggling
for attention, only to react with indifference. After
all, our major powers bomb others then return
with aid. Or, we aid others before bombing them
We are not reliable.
Then we build museums
complete with note cards by each image of naked
girls running down stony paths, their wings burning
and mouths screaming loud enough to tear down
centuries. We read the nearby notes and feel
what are unwritten. We return our eyes to fire
in backgrounds, as if distance from our eyes
can cancel their existence. Our eyes return to
foregrounds and we cringe from smelling burning
flesh. How to return to the origin of our race
before we became impure from living? Or are
we fooling ourselves by believing, in the begin-
ning, we were charged with good behavior?
So that each fire that’s since flared can be
attributed to misbehavior—an approach that
offers the relief of explanation? Silly humans:
the more stringent a law, the more likely we
will break it. Universities rise from philosophers
explaining how laws are necessary, not for direct
-ion, but for fueling rebellion—a chorus arises
in song: “No good exists without evil.” We all
bore wings in the beginning, but we are human
not angels. See how I treat my halo—quite useful
as a belt, my waist the perfect preparation for
disrupting its perfect circle into an ellipsis as it
too melts from the fire. Thus do we create
Euclidean geometry, bowing to it for more than
2,000 years, but with its fate to be its contradictions

Eileen R. Tabios has released about 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in eight countries and cyberspace. Her most recent include The Opposite of Claustrophobia (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2017) and Amnesia: Somebody’s Memoir (Black Radish Books, 2016). Forthcoming poetry collections include Mantattan: An Archaeology (Paloma Press, 2017). Inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku,” her poetry has been translated into eight languages. She also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 12 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays as well as served as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. More information is available at eileenrtabios.com.

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Reuben Gelley Newman
Loki at the Women’s March, NYC

The morning after poor old Trump took charge,
the Trickster, slinking out the Stonewall’s door,
bewitched with booze, became a cat at large,
a pussy fierce as any gurl of yore.
He hasn’t been in town since June
of ’69: his hair on fire, he slips
into a dress, his necklace bright too soon
as someone starts to touch his rosy lips:
a kiss, and then the cops in black and blue.
Now Loki creeps through streets he walked as man,
streets named for Susan B. and people, too,
with AIDS. He meows, and can he understand
the queerly crowd collapsing in so quick,
how rushing bodies grace this country, sick?

Reuben Gelley Newman’s, poems appear in the Alexandria Quarterly and diode poetry journal. A participant in The Adroit Journal’s 2016 Summer Mentorship Program, he is 18 years old, hails from New York City, and will be attending Swarthmore College in the fall.

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Carla Drysdale
Earning My Keep

Each week, we’d go out for fries and cheeseburgers,
my stomach a cave under my watering mouth.

Our wan waitress, twelve like me, carried our plates,
served us cokes, her mouth a line of string pulled straight.

My stepfather would say: You see, she works to earn
her keep. We need to get you a job.

That summer I snapped suckers from tobacco plants
taller than me. I worked in Ontario’s sandy soil until

I had to stop, struck by mono. School started up
again in the fall and the decades stood and fell

and stamped him out. Now I’m looking for work
again to pay the bills, to buy my boys what they need

and don’t need. At home they sit in front of screens
sleep in when they can, do their chores

work at being kind and doing well in school
while I work to earn their keep.

Carla Drysdale is the author of the poetry collections Little Venus (Tightrope Books, 2009) and Inheritance (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Spiraling, Public Pool, Cleaver Magazine, PRISM International, The Same, LIT, Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, and Literary Mama, among other journals, and in the anthology Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo. In May, 2014 she was awarded PRISM’s annual Earle Birney poetry prize for her poem, “Inheritance.” Born in London, Ontario, she lives with her husband and two sons in Ornex, France. To learn more, visit www.carladrysdale.com.

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Clean Coal Jesus Tanka
Chad Parenteau

When the sun is set,
Clean Coal Jesus calls back out
his army of Sauls,
up from the dead to punch out
and die again tomorrow.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared in Amethyst Arsenic, Off the Coast, Ibbetson Street and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

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Karen Hildebrand
Melania’s Lament

I strew my delicate flakes
on the shoulder of your vintage tweed

without regard for the cavalier way
you brush them off. I barge my way in

and land on your shovel, scrape clean
your Sunday plans, cranked up

on a fierce wind, I am.
No flake is all that fragile.

My tears are constant, each unique.
I cry for you, blizzard. I cry for you

giant chip of ice at the curb.
I cry for anyone on the street

as the glistening pile slides
from the midrise ledge on Seventh

and shoots to the sidewalk with a pop.
I am a snowflake on the first day

of spring, basking in stark sun
unafraid of damage to my pale skin.

I am a great thirst, pulling
from the root of a future dahlia.

Karen Hildebrand‘s recent poetry publications include, “Steve Bannon Visits the White House” (What Rough Beast, Indolent Books), “Benefits (in the voice of Kellyanne Conway)” (Maintenant 11, Three Rooms Press) and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” (Portable Boog City Reader). “A History of Feminism,” forthcoming in great weather for MEDIA’s anthology, was a finalist for the 2017 Disquiet Literary Prize. In 2013, her work was adapted for the play, The Old In and Out, produced in NYC. She lives in Brooklyn and is chief content officer for Dance Magazine.

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Tom Daley
For the Aircraft Carriers

Static is the only steadfast thing.
How can I see you

if you come in short? The mosquito’s
quarrel never foreshortens the kamikaze

dawn. Out of fuel, fuming.
The message is best delivered

on a ding and a tear. Takeoffs
are always harder

than forgetting. Swabbing
is only the preliminary

to a cure. Square your shoulders,
sailor—the stars are about to scrawl.

Tom Daley is the author of House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Hacks: Ten Years on Grub Street (Random House, 2007); Poets for Haiti (Yileen Press, 2010); The Body Electric (CreateSpace, 2013); and Luminous Echoes (Into the Void, 2017). He leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and writers working in creative prose.

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D.G. Geis
I hear America screaming

Death haunts the barbershops.
The beards that never grew,
the clippings feathered on the floor:
oh dear oh dear what will we do with the rest of you?
The barbicide so blue, unearthly light
suffused in chrome topped jars; still buzzing,
the radioactive combs laid out,
fluorescent corpses, refugees of Roswell or even worse
(those all too documented aliens!).
“Herr Doktor, “what specimen have we here?”
Comic book amputations
harvested from comic book imputations.
Why this hair will fill pillows and stuffed toys
for all the good little girls and boys.
But oh dear oh dear what will we do with the rest of you?
“The sinister cut is very different
from a crew cut.” the barber is explaining.
“You can do magic with a straight razor.
We once let blood, you know!”
The electric clippers buzz with sinister inference.
Deduction is the barber’s art and
Occam was a barber too.
“Look”, he says with pride,
“these clippers were made in America.
They will not deracinate
but stroke the neck tutorially.
What they have to teach is patience.
But you must not come on Monday.
That is the barber’s day of rest.”
And all the old men filling chairs, marking time,
leafing through old magazines, page by page,
a blur of desuetude and wrinkled lines,
old men who never once get asked:
“Sir, did you have an appointment?”
Wise ones who know there is nothing now worth scheduling;
and whose missing parts, sundered in such strange light
find new brooms which in the end

sweep everything away.

D.G. Geis is the author of Fire Sale (Tupelo Press/Leapfolio) and Mockumentary (Main Street Rag). Most recently, his poetry has appeared in The Irish Times, Fjords, Skylight 47 (Ireland), A New Ulster Review (Ireland), Crannog Magazine (Ireland), The Moth (Ireland), Into the Void (Ireland), The Naugatuck River Review, The Tishman Review, Zoomorphic (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, Ink and Letters, The Journal of Creative Geography, Solstice, The Worcester Review, Broad River Review, Press 53, Passager, and Under the Radar (Nine Arches Press UK). He was shortlisted for both the 2017 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (Ireland) and the 2017 Percy French Prize (Strokestown International Poetry Prize, Ireland) .He was also a finalist for The New Alchemy (University of Alaska) and Fish Prizes (Ireland); and a finalist for the 2016 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition, the 2016 Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize, the 2016 Louis Award, the 2016 Rash Award, and the 2017 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. He divides his time (unequally) between Houston, Galveston, and Dublin.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you want to support the mission and work of Indolent Books, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Eileen Tabios
From The Ashbery Riff-Offs
—where each poem begins with 1 or 1-2 lines from “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” by John Ashbery

Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Complicity

No time for these, except to use them
as kindling. The sooner they burn
the sooner empire burns. The old man
should not have spit—he’d already lived
longer than deserved by someone who
can look at a village of corpses and still
wonder what type of dinner awaits his
presence over the next hilltop. He should
not have spit, though the bears might
appreciate his brain and heart just as
he often appreciates their liver. No one is
innocent in empire. Bears, you’re welcome

Eileen R. Tabios has released about 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in eight countries and cyberspace. Her most recent include The Opposite of Claustrophobia (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2017) and Amnesia: Somebody’s Memoir (Black Radish Books, 2016). Forthcoming poetry collections include Mantattan: An Archaeology (Paloma Press, 2017). Inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku,” her poetry has been translated into eight languages. She also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 12 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays as well as served as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. More information is available at eileenrtabios.com.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you want to support the mission and work of Indolent Books, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Aimee Pozorski
Opening Day in New Britain

Lined up on home plate, we watch
a girl from the New Britain High Madrigals
prepare to sing our Anthem.

I will not cry.
I have given up on displays of American patriotism
a long time ago.

The newest members of New Britain Little League
are the smallest:
five year old boys—and some brave girls—
wearing the jerseys and caps of their sponsors.
On Eliot’s cap, a pawnshop logo.

Red, black, brown, yellow, white—their shirts reflect the colors of
their faces. They have come from
everywhere to live in this town, to stand here now,
to play our sport.

The mayor is here, and the commissioner
and Tebucky Jones, former NFL player and New Britain
man who gives back to his hometown. “Don’t let people tell you
you won’t amount to anything because of where you live,” he says.
They nod and smile, squinting in the sun, squirming in their shoes, some a little bored, drawing pictures in the sand.

After the speeches, the boys take off their hats,
and put them on their chests, like Tebucky Jones, like their dads.

I will not cry, I say,
as they bring out the microphone, and raise the flag.
But then the girl begins, her voice clear as a bell, clear as this day in May.

“Oh say can you see?”
And I do see,
and I do cry,
and I hate myself.

Tony Kushner gives the best lines in Angels in America to Belize,
and I can hear them now, louder than the singing voice floating above the park:

The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing.
He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody can reach it.

Are we free, here, on Opening Day in New Britain?
Some of us are more free than others.

Yet, here are these children lined up before us in a little parade:
the Angels,
the Dodgers,
the Cubs,
the Braves
These young boys—and some brave girls.

Hands and caps over their hearts
they sing the star spangled banner with mouths open and eyes shut.

They know what Ralph Ellison had also known:
we were to affirm the principle on which the country was built
and not the men,
or at least
not the men who did
the violence.

That we must not reject our country on opening day—
that the principles of freedom and justice are bigger than all of us,
and, also, more true.

These little players standing on home plate know it all somehow
with a force that links them as they sway together—dozens of them—

in time to the voice

on the pitcher’s mound.