Hasnain Ali Syed
Set in Stone

You read my name on a piece of paper
And you made a judgment about me
You judged my origin, my religion
The color of my skin
My mannerism, my personality
Just by reading my name
Have heard that reputations precede people
But I never knew that only the name
Of a person could lead to
An opinion so staunch
So absolute
That it will be written in stone
And I
And my kind
Would spend a lifetime to change it
But still fail

I didn’t know that my name
Comes with a baggage so big
That I would have to prove
Through everything that I do
That I am not just my name
I am so much beyond it
I didn’t know that my entire life
Would have to be a battle
Against the stereotypes
That you so conveniently hold
About me

—Submitted on 06/28/2020

Hasnain Ali Syed was born in Sialkot, Pakistan, and moved to Lahore to study medicine, graduating with a medical degree from Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed al Nahyan Medical College. He lives in Lahore with his family.

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.

Clio David
Inside, upstairs (London in lockdown)

Seagulls fly up the Thames estuary, over container crates,
old shipping yards,
the City Airport runway
of retired planes
new housing developments flashing gold
in the early morning sun.
London sleeps
no, it hides.
For the first time since the war
the toy-town streets are ghostly
odd cars, lone ants
who’ve lost their way
shops boarded up
restaurant chairs and tables, still lives
playgrounds mute
office blocks, cliffs of sculpted glass
their insect-like eyes glinting and deserted

everyone is inside
with their families,
or single, alone
fearful, loving, fighting, dying
all the engines of the city have broken down
and in this strange early morning,
our bodies are reborn,
soft and undefended, like molluscs

masked people drive in cars around the city
inside we are still, but everything around us is moving fast
towards an unspecified disaster
or so the news on our phones tells us
we all have the same news and it spells disaster
masked people ward the streets shouting
2 meters apart!
the ceilings cannot hold us
panic swells in the blossom-scented air
sunshine warms us,
hazy, eternal mornings shield us
from this ill wind
fanned by bats wings
the whole world brought together
friends and foes
we cannot hold each other,
we are all dangerous now

sudden rain, a brief release
a rainbow
arches over the city
its colours vibrating with sublime portent
roofs black with wetness
blossom crumpled
sweet smelling on the pavements
like remembered loves
time passing with fisted arrows
of sunlight
in the wet grass

remembered beaches, sand in the creases
of old lives
glimpsed blinding and golden
from our dark urban caves
on satellite coordinates
marked in cyberspace.

the lockdown is political
it reaches into our silence
spies on us
through our phones
the photographs we choose to share
the people we choose to share them with
we are watched, especially now
Police patrol the streets
and people in masks
‘two meters apart!’
‘no gatherings’
‘do not leave your house
except for food and exercise’

food dominates thought and conversation
like the time before
women were confined to houses, extensions of furniture
and other people,
cooking their families three meals a day
three meals a day!
there is no time for anything else
there is no escape
except out to buy more food

runners run, cyclists cycle,
trying not to breath the same air
we cannot get too close or we will get ill, be cautioned
or fined.
hospitals are full, NHS staff are working around the clock
to save us.
every Thursday at 8pm we gather on our doorsteps and balconies
to clap for our nhs
new churches of gratitude
we clap, sing, play instruments, bang cooking pots
we give thanks for our wonderful NHS
and hope the government won’t forget when this is all over
who saved Boris,
and remember to save the NHS

children’s bike rides and Easter egg hunts
in public gardens
beds of tulips burning in the early morning sunlight
blossom melting like candles
on the edges of vision
the BT tower looks on with its all-seeing electronic eye
taxis glide by empty
cars drive in circles around the city

inside houses,
flats and high-rises
women are in more danger from their husbands,
fathers, sons,
than they were before,
holding up bruised arms, melting shields
against fists and kitchen knives
smashed like glass against the edges of tables
landing crumpled on the floor
looked on by children
the pillars of their temples collapse
as hell is let loose on the living
a family of geese ravaged by passing dogs
an ill wind that destroys everything it touches
especially petals,
nothing will go back to how it was

huddled together like penguins against a cold history
stalked by passion, duty, judgment, objectification,
victims of our own accidental beauty.
soft, raging, accomplished, we have given birth to the human race
the birthrate will double in lockdown, as will the number of women killed
at home, in their beds
inside, upstairs

food delivery vans, rubbish trucks
and ambulances wheel about the quiet streets
while we sleep in long, hot afternoons
healing the city with our dreams
next door, in the block of flat at the end of the road,
a man with tourettes shouts from his balcony,
a song washes through the air from a radio
we hum along because we know the tune, but not the words
those who have gardens are thankful
and pray for those who don’t
while praying they won’t catch their misfortune
or the virus funneling us into a caged spring

every day the death toll rises, in the care homes and hospitals where
nurses and doctors have become victims too
the virus does not observe boundaries.
it sweeps through cities, countries, continents
soft and unseen
not even the sun seems to slow it down
scientists are researching vaccines,
like hands building walls in blue dust
as we wait for new temples to emerge,
new ways of living

there is no way back
and we don’t want to go back.
only 9% of people do, according to a recent news poll
we don’t know where we are going but we don’t want to go back
to a time we blinded ourselves with Netflix and bad news
so we didn’t have to think
drugs and religion don’t work anymore
only live streaming,
the anesthetic against long dark nights
listening to freight trains rolling over the tracks
4am owls, until the dawn chorus calls in new light
a new day—always hopeful, never the same

Elderflower bushes blossom on urban paths,
cracked by the earth’s heat
people start tweeting recipes for elderflower cordial,
we collect leaves and find names for them online
home-schooling starts again after the Easter holidays
morning pencils sharpened
we have rituals, routine, hope
we know what we’re doing

life is basic but simple
there is no fomo,
only porridge and time to read,
play scrabble, boggle, monopoly,
think, sit, cook,
time for flowers, the scent of hedgerows
time for everything there was never time for before,
when we were worshipping the wrong gods
all our windows are open

dusty afternoons
falling off pavements,
walking down the middle of the road,
to avoid other people
who are more toxic now than cars
I look at my feet, the same feet, but even they are different
now the seagulls sleep
I’m inside, upstairs
a hot bath is waiting for me

April, 2020

—Submitted on 05/03/2020

Clio David a documentary filmmaker for the BBC.

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.

Andrena Zawinski
Wounds That Bleed Inside

after Marge Piercy

I have survived being raped
and did not become frigid
or impotent or a manhater
tethered to shame and guilt.
I have managed to pull away from hands
grabbing my breasts
after an 8:00 a.m. art class
and did not stop drawing.
I have slapped them
moving up my skirt
in the student union
and still drank my coffee.
I have survived them all,
the dancer who held me too close
with his manhood pushing hard
into my thigh in a slow grind.
I even survived
scaffolding whistles and cat calls
frotteur on the rush hour train
peeper at the window late at night
but
I have not survived
the wounds that bleed inside the fear
of walking a forest trail alone
or along the neighborhood beach
or into some hotel elevator
or a knock at the door late at night.
I have not survived
the fear of a man
turning his body
weapon against me.

—Submitted on 06/27/2020

Andrena Zawinski is the author of Landings (Kelsay Books, 2017), Something About (1st World Publishing, 2009), and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, 1995), as well as a number of chapbooks. She is also editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2012). Zawinski’s poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, Slipstream, Rattle, Many Mountains Moving, 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.

J.D. Isip
American Mutants

mourning becomes a mutant/they say
at some point the flags just remained
half-staff/half of us/half of them/half
of history is a riff on this/us/wearing

black/grey/ash/sackcloth/some skin
other than/lesser/darker/mulatto/
wasn’t a wall yet/could hold back mixed
babies/transgressions/whispering

lovers/genes/mutations/evolution
finds the fissures/seeps/crawls/keeps
the Purifiers up at night/visions of
more of us/less of them/blighted

landscape/unholy/unsanctioned/sex
between/mixing/mixing/losing purity
is ever-unacceptable/is an abomination/
a nation/sullied/must be/has to be/

cleansed/repent!/they say/but hope
we don’t/repent!/we don’t/they say
we won’t/repent!/they won’t/relent
until/they find the fissures/seep/crawl

into sleep/dreams/waking /looking
over our shoulders/afraid/on edge/
a stick/a knife/just to feel safe/a gun
is all they needed/just one/of us/

to justify/the laws/the camps/brands
to wear/to warn/to walk, again/to ships/
to furnaces/to laboratories/to think/
they think/this works/it’s/as if, the Pure

had never had a Revelation.

—Submitted on 04/30/2020

J.D. Isip is the author of Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His work in all genres has appeared in The Rainbow Journal, Elsewhere, Dual Coast Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Rogue Agent, and other journals. Isip is an English professor in Plano, Texas.

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.

Dennis Rhodes
Haiku

Pandemic Rx:
stay out of each other’s way
with loving distance.

—Submitted on June 27, 2020

Dennis Rhodes is the author of Spiritus Pizza & Other Poems (Vital Links, 2000) and Entering Dennis (Xlibris, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared in BLOOM, Chelsea Station, Lambda Literary Review, The Cape Cod Times, New York Newsday, and other journals. Rhodes served as literary editor of Body Positive magazine and poetry editor of Provincetown Magazine. He co-founded the Provincetown Poetry Festival in 1999. Rhodes hosted a weekly radio program on WOMR in Provincetown, featuring interviews and poetry readings with Provincetown and Cape Cod poets.

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.

Jill Silverman
Haiku

These days are too long
I prefer random nightmares
That retreat at dawn

—Submitted on 04/29/2020

Jill Silverman is an internist living and working in New York.

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.

Koss
Navigation

hope is the faint heartbeat of despair
a tiny skipping stone emerging from black water’s crest
flecks of green in planted seedlings you were about to toss
the fleeting sun after three months of winter gray
or days of ceaseless rain when no prayer
could conjure a glint, and everything you love has gone
and men with guns and hanging female effigies spill into Lansing
and cops with killing knees abound
and slaughtered trans women miss the mainstream news
and pasty maskless rogues wreak terror everywhere

hope, always fringing, small, equivocal
a star that, in this furor, performs its driftless blinking

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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.

Mickey J. Corrigan
Three Poems

Cleanup Crew

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
—H.L. Mencken

The doctor is here
on your screen, in your hand
the fed team tele-tells you
Lysol spray and UV rays
a fat lemon to suckle
with your malaria pills.
Suicide seems less risky
a mass poison prescription
when the briefings end
after violent hours, dumb
and dumber licking metal
hoar-frosted with lies.
How do they sleep
you ask at two, four
in the morning, ammonia
smelling salts, bleach inhaler
and what’s another number
atop a stack of creative data
you hear them recount, rephrase
in voices that rise and fall
like curves on a graph
in someone else’s nightmare.

Wastelandia

April was the cruelest month
and homebound with his hands
around her neck, another face
blued from coughing
loss of access
to the safety rope
on the far side of the pool.

March was the coolest month
house parties on speed
nude sunbathing boats bow
to bow to stern
warnings ignored, more Corona
beers, fresh slices of lime.

February was the blindest month
let the Others figure it out
they always do, business
as usual with the hustlers
hustled past, drop a dollar
not worrying about germs or such
on the way to something
so very important so very
forgotten now.

May is open-sesame month
like October masked up
bank robbers on parade
smiling through the night sweats
shaking hands held out
for government handouts
forced to trust
that which has proven
deadly, so very cruel.

Liminal Spaces

It is a simple story
it is not a simple story
The hero trapped
inside the bat cave
silenced by the spread
of joker commentary.
No laughing matter
warnings come
the virus is not the disease
the disease is the host
us
infected, responding
in the societies
we are isolated
in our own liminal spaces.
The virus varies little
the disease varies a lot
No game changers, no
dictatorships of methodologists
but plenty of illusions
all that confidence
where none has been
earned
in the slow, erratic
stumble
toward less
uncertainty.
It’s all our fault
it’s nobody’s fault
it’s the fault line
in our democracy.

—Submitted on 04/29/2020

Mickey J. Corrigan is the author the disappearing self (Kelsay Books, 2020), What I Did for Love (Bloodhound Books, 2019), and Project XX (Salt Publishing, 2017), among other collections of poetry and fiction. Her poems have appeared in r.kv.r.y., The Voices Project, The Rye Whiskey Review, Mobius, Fourth & Sycamore, and other journals. She lives in South Florida.

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.

Koss
Field Days: Queer Spotted in Smithville Restaurant

(Instructions: you can reorder the lines to your liking, no scissors included)

Sometimes 
you don’t 
know how 
a day will play 
a simple thing 
like lunch 
can become 
a tiny war
inside 
a bigger
war	 
behind green
glass grids
pale brick
the faux
wood counter

tried to eat	
at the usual place      
my favorite spot 
with cheap shawarma 
owned by some 
white guy
pushing ethnic eats
in this tiny town 
whose only
known culture
is food
dude behind counter 
says can I help you sir   
then ma’am   
then gestures
and adds 	
he	she	[whatever you are]	
louder loudest
doubles over 	
grabs his gut
like he’s the fuck 
funniest thing 
this side of the moon

maybe I had changed 		
in the last 
thirty visits
where I came
and ate
shawarma
without fare

he allowed 
for that 	
in 	his 		[joke]	
he
had an audience	
add the ham	
what a ca(r)d 	
no
dag 	
he laughed 	[he laughed]	
at his 	gaffe 	the 	ass

my hair is long		
Banshee long
Cherokee long
but just a little	
and me tall 	 [yes a	 bit]
but hardly
the fifty foot
woman and less
the average man

I left 	angry	
no food	 
humiliation 
too high 
a price	
then returned 	in a pink black rage	
dropped
chandeliers 
with 	red [superbitch] eyes 
and sound
sheer and clean
as a train	scream

yes bitch
is the better
word
for me	
I’ll sex myself
for anger
made history 
a scene	
in a
dinkish hick
town 	[the one I grew up in	live in now]
by daring to say		gay 	the word
at my [former] favorite restaurant    
 	
secret identity of superBansheeBitch
revealed agent androgyne 
with her mystery cocktwat
all shooting hot and shifting 
in her razor taser pantyknickers
[yeah bunched too] 	
up my ambiguous non-ass 
while I ranted the impromptu terms 
of our sudden divorce
to my own audience 	
those patrons 
for which I was 	
dubbed the mocking 
queer bird

but 
if you only 
if you only
if you only 	knew
him
the manager said

[	]

Yelp 	[yes too]	 
the only
justice queers 
don’t have 
to pay for or rent in a suit 
or beg for
or 
or 
or.... not really justice 	but a moment
a word

Two weeks later 	
at Tim Horton’s 		
a fifty-somethin’
[not feet]
woman
kind, light 	
with a white 
wide smile 
that could bring dead
chrysanthemums back 
to spanking high life 
said 	hey	pretty	lady
how is your day 
	
but how could I be 	
both those things
sir				pretty lady
in a span of two weeks
but I received it 
with a smile 	
a coffee    
a plain donut
and gratitude 

I don’t know
what I look like
can’t see through
dykes don’t want to 
through some others’
eyes Being is a thing
reserved for straight 
white 	           men

and

restaurants 
come and go
open and close
their secret doors
people kindled
change is slow
and I clock old
and finished
in this country
of clowned
American
towns

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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.

Nina Palattella
Spring Flowers Bring Only Anger This Year

I am letting go of
the expectation that I cannot or should not be angry, that
I cannot be angry and still be my parents’ daughter,
my parents’ anything—
that I should look at the clouds only with the intention
of extracting silver linings, because today through the uncovered windows
all of the clouds look like “fuck you”:
fuck your hard work and your relationships and your routine and your plans
and and and—I have grown weary of addition that brings still negative outcomes.

I am letting go of
the hope that, one day, truth will again be universal, not splintered
into factions, not some kind of choice: I resent smothering in place under the weight
of information while others continue, write “hoax” and “conspiracy” into
virtual boxes with blue post buttons, and some days (if I’m being honest)
I resent the idea of complete freedom, the expectation
that nothing should hinder us, because reality has taken all my expectations
and run them through the shredder, one big enough for God to use. Have you heard that
Easter is cancelled, too? No spring rebirth, reawakening, or renewal.
All progress delayed indefinitely—and I can’t even get a “sorry”? Fuck that, too.

I am letting go of
the belief that it is a mortal sin to be tired,
to need rest, to need love, to need.
I am shedding the expectation that I can be a machine,
that inhaling exhaust will ever be enough for me
to keep going. It seems that somewhere out there someone knew,
somehow, that all my friends say I need to slow down,
and so life intervened, and (in a way) made me.
I return the smallest glimmer of gratitude,
a blemish of brightness in the dense igneous matter of my anger.

—Submitted on 04/29/2020

Nina Palattella is a recent graduate of Kent State University. Her poetry has appeared Luna Negra and Scribendi. She served as editor in chief of Brainchild, a student-run literary and arts magazine. Palattella will be an editorial intern at Penguin Random House in the summer of 2021.

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.