Harper Ellen Houston
Protection

I was getting a shot in my ass
when they asked me if I had travelled
recently. The gloom lifted
from a lukewarm winter
and spring is gonorrhea yellow,
pollen covering cars
and filling gutters. A yellow nothing
like the sun, like my asshole
is like a dead eye in the dark
of A Tell-Tale Heart
and I want to bury an older man.
While everyone coughed and sneezed,
I was sent home because my throat
was slimed with words I couldn’t say
until now: I was raped…
You said it before I could.
You are gentle, the way you say
we gotta be good Christian lovers
keeping the sheets between us,
waiting for the blessing
of The Health Dept.
You are patient, the way you kiss
every single slice of me.
Just as the marks on my arms
fade from fresh pink,
just as I was getting better,
our moment turned
into an apocalypse. I sit,
stuck at home smoking
away the terror and making myself
eat before throwing away
the last groceries I’ll get for a while.
All I think about is you,
just a county away, and I can’t help
taking it personally
when executive orders replaced
our simple Christian sheets.

Harper Ellen Houston has lived in North Carolina most of her life. This is her first published poem, but she has a small lovechild collection she is shopping around. When Houston is not writing, she pays for cat food as a chef. She is a 33 year-old trans woman whose raw experience cracks her voice.

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Gad Kaynar-Kissinger
Shells

Now that everything closed down,
That vain display windows
Withdraw inward and whisper
Like traitors:
You could have dispensed with us long ago.
Now that stages expose their misshapen
Backs, that tablecloths are pulled off
Tables in luxury restaurants
Like a seductive brassiere from the prosthetic
Silicon breasts of a first-class stripper,
Now that the belly is sucked in to silence
The bellows of the stalled ox,
Now that credit cards are converted to
Fortunetellers’ cards calculating
Galactic Cataclysms,
And all the accountants
Consider how much more they can subtract
From their heavy
Clients so that they may
Elevate in the refracted light
Ascend upon the shaky rectitude
Of the spirit toward
The shells.
Toward themselves.

—Translated by Natalie Feinstein

Gad Kaynar-Kissinger is the author of the Hebrew language poetry collection Selfi (Safra Publishing, 2018), among many other books of poetry and prose. His poems in English translation have recently appeared in Atlas and Alice, Pidgeonholes, The Bombay Review, and Anomaly. A stage, TV and film actor, Kaynar-Kissinger has translated some 70 plays into Hebrew from English, German, Norwegian and Swedish. He was awarded the Norwegian Order of Merit for his translations of Henrik Ibsen’s works into Hebrew. Until his retirement, Kaynar-Kissinger was a professor of theater studies at Tel Aviv University. 

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Paige Provenzano
The Lights Were Flashing

The gates were down and the lights were flashing and the train was blaring its horn but the woman drove her car around the gates and onto the tracks and her car was hit by the train,
Her car was crushed by the impact of the train,
The crushed metal of her car had to be cut into to get her out,
They got her out but she was dead.

There are so many (usual) ways to die:
car accident, hypothermia, poisoning, chronic illness, old age, heart attack, wild animal attack.

How strange to die of a usual cause, a normal cause, in this time of a global pandemic,
How strange to die of an old way, rather than this new way, when all eyes are on this new way to die.

To say of her, she was told to isolate at home and go out only for necessities,
To say of her, she went out for necessities and on her way home drove her car around the gates and onto the train tracks,
To say of her, she was going to isolate from the virus but she died when her car was crushed by a train.

How strange to say these things of her.

While riding my bike on Sunday, I had thought, how strange it would be to die today while riding my bicycle,
Outside, in the fresh air.

Paige Provenzano is an emerging writer. She is working on a memoir about things she doesn’t remember and the untrustworthiness of the things she does.

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Candice Louisa Daquin
Isolation in the Time of Covid-19

if the act is on, full wattage
everyone sees a together girl, straight backed by taut strings
oh the puppet master pulls
them tightly in compensation for internal sag
they see a girl who has checked all the boxes;
education, polish, spit and shine, big smile, combed hair, thighs together
they see what they want to see
just as we read the truth and speak a lie
who wants to know the inside? The fight beneath?
Maybe at 18. When we still have patience, and time, and youth and romance
thinking it lovely to talk of emotions and breakage and pain
the beauty of those things when safe from death
edging closer, every year, less tolerance
until even your therapist has a break-down and can’t listen anymore
Covid-19 keep your distance? Aren’t we already alienated and disregarded?
She wants someone to listen, she wants someone, she wants to stop
this hole within her from growing out of control and taking her over
she wants to speak her truth to someone who gives a damn
it’s almost like wishing to have perky tits again and a hymen
it’s almost like hoping at the dinner table for love instead of silence.
She used to fake it really well, used to know all the ways of getting clean and squeaky
People are kind to children and pretty youth
Unkind to those who are mentally ill and grow old in their despair
old before your time, before you stopped wanting to be wooed and still wanting to wear
tight clothes and push up bras, just because you can.
Now she understands why middle aged women read romance novels
or hate and never do
the combat of wanting to be desired and knowing it’s not going to
ever again, they only like those little girls in tiny clothes
whose bodies are barely formed
are you bitter? Are you scorned? The world belongs to men
because they stop loving at a certain age and women
hate each other especially the peachy ones, who remind them of
what they’ll never get back.
The fight beneath, the bitchy office manager who used to tut beneath her breath
every time she walked past in her best blue heals
she had a good heart then and it hurt to be treated so
now she knows the meaning of
the loss in their eyes
but she still wants to be desired
is she going to turn into one of those sad ole gals who keeps wearing too tight jeans
hanging out at less and less popular places in hope?
Or will her heart shrivel and dry like a match burning its sulfur
hardly holds its original form
just the dark wood left, stained by flame
never to be struck
again.
She would like to think someone would
love her at any time, for more than whether she has loosening skin or
sagging bits, she has heard this is something men point out unkindly in bed
she’d probably sock them if they did, and bite something off
who the fuck has the right?
It fills her with a fresh hell to imagine
how they think they’re entitled
but her young self will remind her; it’s we who let this happen
dear wolf
we lay ourselves down when they tell us we’re not worthy
and we either let ourselves vanish
or we stop believing we can be
desired for more than the price of our skin
imagine us hanging like pieces of meat
dear wolf
waiting for the flies to obviate our claim
to be equal or good enough
whilst they, rotund, graying, flacid
rule the world or pretend to
we give life, we carry the future
are we going to let this be or
become wild, something untamed and furious
with the thirst of a girl wanting to give her entire heart
and throw it into the furnace
watch it burn with all that you want
this love, this need, this impossible desire
even as your body dries and says; I am done
you’re never done, you bring life, you bring longing
within you is a timeless heart.
She wants you to know
she may seem withered to you or not
as once she was, but she needs as much as ever
that desire, so much so she may climb out of
of her falling skin and become
a butterfly in reverse, going underground
where in darkness nobody can tell
then it’s all about the beat of life
that eternal drum
and anyone can play
as long as they join
beating their need against stretched leather
in the ancient way before we invented
exclusion and condemnation
when those wisest and most sought
were not children
but their bright eyed elders
still with the pulse
of hunger inside them.

Candice Louisa Daquin is the author of the poetry collections A jar for the jarring (lulu.com, 2016), The bright day is gone child and you are in for the dark (lulu.com, 2016), Illusions of existing (The Feathered Sleep Press, 2016), Sit in fever (lulu.com, 2016), and Pinch the Lock (Finishing Line Press, 2017). With Christine E. Ray, Kindra M. Austin, and Rachel Finch, she co-edited We Will Not Be Silenced (Indie Blu(e) Publishing, 2018), an anthology of poetry inspired by #MeToo. She also edited, with Hallelujah R. Huston, the anthology SMITTEN: This Is What Love Looks Like (Indie Blu(e) Publishing, 2019). Having immigrated to America two months after 9/11, she has lived in the Southwest ever since. Online at www.thefeatheredsleep.com

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Alex Gurtis
Off the Grid During the Beginning of the Pandemic

Life was pine forest and lakes.
Our isolation was another name
for a cracking sea wall
holding back the surging tide.

Campers still exchanged
pizza and stories around
a campfire. No cell service meant
no rising death counts. We
didn’t know the president
was tested, nor that the

stock market jumped off the roof
of the exchange, dashing its brains
on the horns of the bull below.
Our only sign of dissonance was falling
asleep to the sound of howitzers
firing live ammunition at the moon.

An elderly man told us
the National Guard was training
for emergency situations
as we shared blackberries that
tasted bitter and stained

our lips. Around the nightly fire,
I watched a bird’s nest bounce
in the wind until the branch
landed inside the Big Dipper.

That same wind picked leaves off
dying trees, releasing them with a kiss.
Their yellow bodies looked like they
were hiking up a mountain to pray.

All was well until one day we woke
up to squirrels tearing our bags,
stealing our food like newscast of

two women punching each
other at a grocery store
while a thin man steals
their carts. That day panic

picked up the picnic table and ran
leaving us short of breath, hungry.

Alex Gurtis is an Orlando, Florida based poet. His work has appeared in Zephyr, StoryTeller Magazine, and the Garfield Lake Review.

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Emi Bergquist
While We Recover

In quarantine, the Forget-Me-Nots
blossom a grey-fade

as a quiet slow fills
the empty ravines of city streets.

Alone in a canyon, a voice will echo—
a voice will find its chorus:

Meanwhile in Italy, isolation has brought
people together, singing from their balconies.

Adaptability becomes
our survival —

the window
cracked open, beckoning

the early spring morning
breeze inside.

Emi Bergquist is a poet, performer, and mixed media artist originally from Idaho. Her work often explores the intersection of identity, sexuality, nature, love, and loss. She has lived in Brooklyn since 2015, is an active associate of the Poetry Society of New York, a regular cast member of The Poetry Brothel, and an editor of Milk Press Books.

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Victoria Richard
Confessions of the Apocalypse

Since the stars
Have decided to shine
A little dimmer—

Since all peace
Has shriveled up
In earth’s belly—

Since the only
Glow I remember now
Is Australia on fire—

Since the only thing
I’ve felt in a week
Is trembling—

As I shake my uncle’s hand
As I push another allergy pill into my throat
As I Germ -X my table at the coffee shop

Is formality excused?
Do I get to say things
That no one thinks I should?

My brain is
Scrambling for serotonin
Like a mouse for crumbs

Can I say that
I still have dreams—
Vivid blue, sometimes gold—

My throat burns
From air whistling from
My lungs—

(Fuck you,
Amygdala,
Fuck you)

I’m a good girl
That is what
The dream says

I am always amazed
At how splendidly
My body functions

Smoother
Purer
Than my mind

I have decided
To allow myself
To be beshrewn

Honesty is usually
What people call
Evil—ugly—depraved—

I say it is
What makes a
Heart beat holy

Sometimes I lie
Awake remembering
Loving you—

I promise I don’t
Anymore—

Maybe something
Inside this rotten
Flower heart

Always will
Wonder if your
Breaths are tattered

Like mine.

Victoria Richard is a recent creative writing graduate of Jubilee Performing Arts Conservatory in McComb, Mississippi. She is currently studying English Literature at Millsaps College. Richard has received three Scholastic Awards for her work in fiction, poetry, journalism, and creative nonfiction. Her poetry has appeared in South 85 Journal.

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Francis Fernandes
Lull in the Time of Corona

Glenn Gould, the Bach specialist,
When not hunched over the keyboards
On his favourite stool, used to proffer
His hand to fellow musicians and journalists
Only at the last second to pull it away
And run it through his hair. We all know
That move from school. It was a joke,
A prank, just clowning around.
But for this genius it was as much
Fear of the other as impish horseplay.
And then there’s that famous anecdote
Where he gets a call from his colleague
Alfred Brendel, who is on a stopover
At Pearson International Airport:
During the conversation the German
Pianist, having caught a cold,
Can’t hold back a sneeze, and without
A moment’s delay Gould hangs up on him.
Those were certainly the good old days:
Innocent germs, the global oil crisis
And that awesome Summit Series of ’72.
But, hey, we are all hypochondriacs now.
We can’t help it. The lineups at the clinics
Are blocks long. There’s no more school.
No more hockey. No more concerts
(Although that would have suited Glenn,
Ensconced forever, as he was,
In the bubble of his recording studio).
So what are we to do?
We do the elbow bumps and footshakes.
Peace sign, namaste. Or we flout
Convention and shove our neighbour
To get at the merchandise. We buy
More guns. As for me, I’m not much
Of a musician, nor am I good
At improvising. And so I go running
Through the woods, picking up stray leaves
And stuffing them in the pockets
Of my jogging pants – seeing as toilet
Paper is so scarce. A precious commodity,
That. It’s become the rare-earth metal
Of Households. I heard that the real
Rare-earth metal in our cell phones
Most likely comes from a heavily guarded
Mine somewhere in Mongolia.
Which makes me wonder if the trucks
Filled with toiletry supplies will soon
Need an armed escort. My mother
Would tell us stories of the privations
They had to overcome in Nazi Germany,
The sacrifices they all made,
The little things that thrilled,
Like homemade jam and Mendelssohn.
We are at war, too, according to a leader.
“Nous sommes en guerre!” certainly
Makes it sound as though
We had a common enemy. Another leader,
Who is as good at ruffling his hair
As Gould, wants to do it his way,
Calling upon the people to forge
An alliance: “We must build immunity!”
While the Czar declares, “L’état c’est moi!”
And a clown President wonders
Where all his fans went to.
They’re closing factories for a while,
Some forever. White-collar employees
Are working on their laptops from home.
The sun is shining and the birch trees
Have begun to pollinate (which doesn’t
Make the jogging any easier for me).
And so being the cad that I am,
The incorrigible slacker, I get my friend,
Who’s my GP, to certify a paid sick leave.
Somehow that makes me feel unpatriotic.
As consolation, I decide to watch
The eight games (on DVD): that
Canada-Russia Super Series from ’72,
“The most dramatic hockey series
Ever played” (the same year, by the way,
That Gould’s record company released
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2).
The whole point being: I’m tired
Of glancing at my cell phone
And keeping track of the number
Of infected people in my vicinity.
(The number is growing at an alarming
rate!) What I really want to do
Is relive a bit of the glory I felt
When I was only five. When I hadn’t
Yet grown to love Goldberg and Gould’s
Isolation. When the only numbers
I saw were the goals scored
And the only voice I heard cried out
“Scores! Henderson has scored…”

Francis Fernandes writes: I am a Canadian expat living in Germany. Until now I’ve been teaching English in a private language school, but what with the current global crisis I am now spending the days eating cake, sipping espresso, and going over some of my poems.

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Marjorie Moorhead
Coronavirus Diary (3/14/2020)

I dreamt I woke up, and Covid-19 was a dream
not a disaster.
It had never happened, and things were the same.

Covid-19 and I’m grinding my teeth again.
Broken bloody teeth enter my dreams.
As well as a niece who’s sick and knows it,
yet comes too near.
Weaponized coughing. Sneezes of death.

I’ve come to resent the closeness
of my husband’s breath, misting our pillow.
Shelves now stocked with extra
peanut butter, soap, and sprays. In case
there’s a shortage, or the demand to stay in.

Through the late 80s and early 90s, I survived
a virus for which there is no cure.
Left a swath of death in its wake.
Changed the course of many lives, forever.
I lived, have two kids, and grow old;

am good at “being in the moment”.
I appreciate small and beautiful things.
But these days of darkening news, anxiety builds
like a Hitchcockian thriller, highlighting
all we have to lose.

Editor’s Note: What Rough Beast welcomes poems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The usual editorial guidelines apply—we don’t generally like poems that dwell overmuch on the shortcomings of the Trump administration—It simply does not usually make for good poetry. Poems may allude to the administration’s catastrophic negligence in responding to this pandemic, but we’d rather read about your personal experience of the pandemic than a critique of the administration’s response.

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of 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 Amethyst Review, HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, Tiny Lit Seed, Verse-Virtual, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon; From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), Amanda McLeod & Mela Blust; Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT. Vol. II (The Blueline, 2018), edited by Northshire Poets Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, David Mook, Marcia Angermann, Peter Bradley and Monica Stillman; and others. She received an Indolent Books scholarship to attend a summer 2019 workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.

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