Marjorie Moorhead
Shout
the Summer of 2020

Our pandemic history
flows from manic making
of banana breads, and no t.p.,
to where mass protest is urgent necessity.
A black man died under blue clad weight;
neck held down, casually,
by the racist knee of a bully cop
leaning into white supremacy,
brutalizing with impunity,
thinking his perceived racial superiority
grants him immunity;
permits him to act as vigilante.

Unrest and protest follows. Tsunami
amassing; a wave led by the outraged
brave building a roar to implement change,
correct wrongs; imagine more.
Imagine better and bring it about;
that is what people in the streets are calling for.
That is why we all must shout.

—Submitted on 08/31/2020

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Verse-Virtual, Rising Phoenix Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Covid Spring (Hobblebush Books, 2020). 

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.

Jessica Dawson
Florida Man Positive About Coronavirus

In what every news cycle has belabored
as unprecedented times, a man of great
and horrific legend emerges from the swamp
to worsen our troubled minds.

Florida Man remains unapologetically positive
as coronavirus cases flourish in the Sunshine State,
despite comprehensive scientific warnings
calling for stricter social distancing measures
and continued mask use.

“You see, I encourage people to get out there and walk
around the beach, sing into their neighbors’ mouths—
If you want to ride a manatee, hell, I won’t stop ‘ya!”

Citing “boredom” and “not having enough
bullets to shoot down all them hurricanes,”
Florida Man even took to cooking up a miracle cure
only a person from the state known as America’s Penis
could concoct: an illegal bathtub vaccination.

When asked about the remedy’s ingredients
Florida Man shrugged his shoulders, pulling
meth from his belly-button to offer our reporter:
“I let Jesus take the wheel on most my decisions.”

Although Florida Man has never been spotted
in a church—or wearing a shirt—
his religious toutings have gained traction in communities
where Four Loko is king and education is optionable.

During the time we spent with Florida Man
it was hard to not root for his misguided efforts,
even when those efforts involved squeezing an alligator
through a Wendy’s drive-thru window.

—Submitted on 08/30/2020

Jessica Dawson‘s poems have appeared in Cantilevers, as well as in the anthology From the Ashes (Animal Heart Press, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Originally from central Florida, Dawson lives in Chicago, where she is a rape crisis counselor. 

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.

Jessica Dawson
Trading Trumpets for Guns

A gun swells in the palms
of a child like a bee sting

that weighs the fright against
trigger-happy boredom.

The child’s fingers are swollen
with a clumsy curiosity,

and the cool of the steel numbs
the worries of future bullets.

The streets are war for children,
and they fear running out

of lead. Their fingerprints leave
blood stains on their parents’ hearts

who were forced to leave blood
stains on their parent’s hearts

and it continues into generations
past and future, until finally

the pop sounds of shots fired
distort themselves into the brass

infernal blasts of a trumpet,
the original weapon of war

and power. Inside every child
is the sheet music against death.

In their palms, the trumpet sounds
like a battle cry for the future.

—Submitted on 08/30/2020

Jessica Dawson‘s poems have appeared in Cantilevers, as well as in the anthology From the Ashes (Animal Heart Press, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Originally from central Florida, Dawson lives in Chicago, where she is a rape crisis counselor. 

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.

Dante Fuoco
To Men Who Bike, No Mask Adorned

In Prospect Park thou bikes, no mask adorned.
Thy wheels expensive, yes, although, my dear,
Not more than life, not more than mine—you’re gone!
A racing man. Oh, yes. A fuckboi clear.
Imagine babies (thou is one). So cute
until they shit—yet diapers curb the mess.
To call your mouth a hole is true, though mute
you heave on hills. So get your ass a dress.
Dear fuckboi, listen: Mask4Mask is life.
Though air tastes nice I feel it pulse with dread.
Dear, fuckboi—no! What do thou make of strife?
What fuckboi stops? What fuckboi counts the dead?
I sense thou’ll cheer at seven, mouth askew.
At night I’ll dream of herding little ewe.

—Submitted on 09/06/2020

Dante Fuoco‘s work appears in KGB Bar Lit and Saints+Sinners 2018. He holds a BA from Swarthmore College. A Pittsburgh native, Fuoco now lives in Brooklyn, where he is a restorative justice coordinator in the NYC public schools, and coaches an LGBTQIA+ adult swim team. 

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.

Jessica Dawson
Practicing Person-First Language

I have been learning how to describe people by what they have
versus what they are,
like: “Jacob lives with paralysis” instead of “Jacob is paralyzed.”

It’s the “is blank” that weighs the person down, like two freshly immobile legs attached
to the waist of a healthy, young, black male.

In person-first language, Jacob has a disability. In person-first language, you’d say:
Jacob is living while black.
Jacob has been another victim of police brutality.
Jacob’s children will live with seeing their father shot in the back, multiple times.

When using person-first language, remember:
Jacob and his children are not the condition in which they are forced to live.

—Submitted on 08/30/2020

Jessica Dawson‘s poems have appeared in Cantilevers, as well as in the anthology From the Ashes (Animal Heart Press, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Originally from central Florida, Dawson lives in Chicago, where she is a rape crisis counselor. 

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.

Vic Nogay
Synth

in the far then, when this life got hard, or
felt wrong,
i used to dream about the lives i’d left
and what they could have been if i’d stayed.
a fantasy of color, burning in imagination
backlit
by a falsehood of realism in gray.

in the near then, i’m grown,
responsible.
i can pick apart the bodies of my burning loves
and their conflicts,
rearrange their limbs until
they fit
better, and use my burnt black fingers to draw a map
to a place i have never been.

both far then and near then
held a
space for self-silence—
an other-reliance—
but now
as the world booms in dissonant synths,
as the colors bloom,
backlit black, neon new,

i see all of me. i hear none of you.

—Submitted on 09/03/2020

Vic Nogay‘s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Daily Drunk, 433, Anti-Heroin Chic, Versification, and other journals. She grew up in Ohio and attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She is an agent at Columbus Humane, an animal protection organization in Columbus, Ohio. Twitter @vicnogay. 

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.

Michael McKeown Bondhus
Neoliberalism

Fuck the Police Emergency Action, Brooklyn, 2019

Blocking traffic
I’m reminded
how little I know—not
the endemic ignorance
of whiteness, but
the stupidity of a boy
incapable of grasping
the various things I’ll understand
when I’m older (which is now)—my TIAA-CREF,
our home mortgage rate,
adding deductions on returns, accounting
for deductibles when paying
for the pills I need to take. I know nothing
of how life works.

Suddenly, I can’t define racism or neoliberalism,
much less explain what they have to do with me being here
in the middle of Flatbush Ave
while you stand on every
sidewalk and tell me about the time I was 12 and called you
a racist
(because you are)
and your laugh then was the bark and snarl
of a dog guarding a glass house
as you told me all the awful things
you knew about black people,
an entire race in conspiracy against you
and me (not all
of them like that,
but you know,
most)
and then there were the facts (someone told you),
and then the things you saw yourself
(like the time you drove
in downtown Bridgeport
on your way back from Van Halen),
and at 12 years old I had no answers
to any of this, no answers to your love for me,

your little moron,

who “someday will get it,”
but I still don’t

or maybe I do

and that’s why I’m here
in skin that fits
better than it should, constantly
checking
myself.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

Michael McKeown Bondhus (formerly Charlie) is an Irish-American writer. He’s the author of Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from the Publishing Triangle. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College (New Jersey—unceded Lenape land). More at: charliebondhus.com.

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.

James Diaz
Online Wars of The Twisted Heart

“the world’s not falling apart, because of me.”
—Dar Williams

I know something about it
what you’re going through
how the world takes you for granted
your kin your kind
wearing you down down down
I know something about wanting to just give it all back
every single thing that was never yours
all their shit and hollerin’
and god almighty it’s some kinda war in there
basement hauntings at least three generations old
mounting the stairs to dingy star light lounges filled with dreams deferred
and you can settle into love for reasons having to do with what you never got
but it will not last
it will not feed you
or come when you originally called
out in the cradle
shooting up and only hearing a muffled sound;
your folks
if they could have, maybe they would have
but there’s no machine for that
there’s just this pen and paper
and the nights getting longer as you get older
and learn to do half a bit better but by no means
do you have it all down
so yeah, I know something about it
what you’re going through
maybe you logged on tonight
and all you see is a bunch of screaming in your timeline
and you don’t know exactly why at first
but you feel like you’re crying out in the dark for a ship that never arrived
and you wanna reach out and touch the heart of the problem
but it’s just as big and immovable as it was to you then
listen, give it back, it’s not yours
we’re all survivors of this intergenerational transmission of trauma
all doing half a bit better but by no means
do we have it down
and so it’s bringing you down, I get it
but just step outside and take in those stars for a minute
above your head, even though an alive thing can feel all the way dead
it is most definitely alive
you are right where you need to be
and ok and on time
and belonging and true
and this, this is your world too.
Welcome home.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals.

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.

James Diaz
This Life We’ve Lived

But imagine this feather bed
and how I have strayed into the light
like a derailed train
in the autumn’s mix of amber
softly blowing up someone’s kicked about dreams
I have lived this life
you might say
to no one in particular
late at night
by the railroad tracks
where you have waited for years
just to belong
to something tangible and stronger than you are
right now
the dogs are baying at the moon
twice removed
from all you may have done
or failed to do
before this moment
and if love is just the noise between one season
brushed against another, if it’s something you’ve never really known
or owned or been held up in
like light from the farthest side of the world
is it not worth it anyway?
a train that never comes
the waiting, the hurting
the healing howling climbing
up up up
too far in this thing to ever come back down
I have lived this life.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals.

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.

James Diaz
Not So Tough After All

I walk back inside
broken hand

skin fractal / lightning rattle
smallest stove / biggest bond of bone

starling staggering up
sketching out all the debris in me

chalk lines on pavement
filling in as a prayer—for tonight

you can’t afford to know too much about these things
where they come from

a streak of golden—a so-long kinda song
in scar light

and so I twist myself into a bird
under a burning bed

the moon is / half-way home
better than no home at all

it’s always uphill
ankle broke—broke—and fucked…

once I knew a thing
sometimes, I still do, I guess

each year gets a little longer
and somehow, despite experience, harder to bear

that’s how it is
you think you have forever

but you don’t
only it felt that way once

and here you are
broken bird twisted

stagger bruise light
blurred up along the interstate

when I’m gone—
tell em I left happy

and forgiven
and in love

with everything
that ever happened to me.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals. 

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.