Doret Canton
Three Poems

White Privilege Spreading Covid19

Defying a NYC shelter in place mandate
fleeing to the Hamptons with a case of Covid19

Coughing in strangers faces
screaming Covid19

Using a public gym while awaiting test results
Rand Paul probably bored
recklessly reaffirmed
White privilege
to liven up his day

Exploiting pandemic desperation
The Colvin brothers sold steeply priced hand sanitizer
They have not been arrested or charged
It’s been over a month
A Black man was killed for selling loosies

Selfishly blocking a hospital
amid a global health crisis
with rhetoric and guns

Refusing to self-quarantine after a positive diagnosis
If I fixed my Black mouth to say “You can’t tell me what to do”
I might not be around to write another poem

New Detroit Lost its Gleam (For Deborah Gatewood)

Retirement on the horizon
Ready to spoil my granddaughter
My only daughter’s daughter

Survived much in 63 years
Independence comes at a cost
Worked all my life

Lots of double shifts, overtime
If they called
I went

If you got blood drawn at
Beaumont Health
It may have been me
telling you to make a fist

Wouldn’t miss
Beaumont Health
Would’ve been free at 65

They stopped seeing me at 55

My son in law
My young granddaughter
SAW ME
Strengthened me
to do my last 2 years unseen

An unforeseen disease, Covid19
spread through the world

Hospital workers heroes
I was a hero
that wouldn’t be saved

I was as free as a Black woman
in Detroit could be
When I came down with a cough and fever
New Detroit lost its gleam

I gave Beaumont Health
31 years
They gave me
cough medicine

Suspicion All Around

In the mist of Covid19
Ignoring vulnerability possibilities

Can’t think
What if I get sick?

Not disillusioned
No Covid19 immunity
Can fall ill at anytime
Following health guidelines
Simply added one of my own
So, I don’t crumble

As I go to work; interacting with many people
uncertain if any are asymptomatic
I don’t know where they’ve been
They don’t know where I’ve been

Suspicion all around

A company-wide email went around
Someone tested positive for Covid19
I had a plethora of questions
Who is it?
Where did they work?
Did I pass them in the hallway?
Did we talk in the hallway?
Are they going to be okay?

As these questions swirled within my head
I didn’t break
I continued on as normal

—Submitted on 06/23/2020

Doret Canton was raised in the Bronx, and currently lives in Atlanta.

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.

Frances Jackson
Journal Entry #26

my back hurts like an old lady
this morning. last night,
i stayed up till two in the morning like
a teenager, like
someone excited to live, like
going out at night, fake eyelashes glued, like
little white tendrils that sprout from old carrots
in the back of a bag.

i wonder
who i will meet here
in this cold, damp dark.

in my small room,
futile stretch; shrink:
a child’s stupid plastic
reduced in the oven
to be left at camp                     worst-case
or stuck on the fridge              best

one day—always, always—
to be thrown out
amid the rot.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Frances Jackson is a queer doctoral student in the Southeast. Her poetry has appeared in the Eunoia 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.

J.P. White
The Elk on the Beach in Oregon

Everywhere the animals are getting reacquainted.
Loggerhead turtles are laying more eggs in Juno, Florida.
Pandas are getting frisky at the Hong Kong zoo.
Silverbacks are pounding their chests in St. Paul, Minnesota.
For one suspended moment,
The earth has been returned to the animals.

If we understand suffering to be the quiet, backroom sibling
To our sudden loss of control,
Then nothing still to come
Could have prepared us for this weeping and this Eden.
As now, over coffee,
When a sheave of late morning sun hoists the fog,
A herd of elk not seen for fifty years,
Returns from the shadow coastal mountains to walk the beach,
Take the air, look out again across the Pacific.

—Submitted on 06/19/2020

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collection All Good Water (Holy Cow! Press, 2010) and the novel Every Boat Turns South (Permanent Press, 2009), as well as several other books. His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies.

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.

Court Castaños
Two Poems

Honey Gold

—for Max, in transition, and to boyhood hard-won.

Hey kid, I found you

out there on the school yard, smoldering,
in your baseball cap, two sizes too big, and those pink jeans

your parents wrestled you into. Kids circling like buzzards,

like shards, under the migraine heat, the tired grimace
of late summer sun. You, silent, grinding your milk teeth

sharp. Six years old and your eyes already knew

how to knock questions out from people’s mouths
before they had a chance to suck the juice from the bone.

There is a quiet that happens inside

the drum of rainstorms, that I imagine you heard
that day you cut the long strands

of hair from your little boy head. You emerged from the secret

fort, bits of clipped hair stuck to the sweat of your bare chest, shining
the way dandelion seeds flicker in the golden hour

after they’ve been blown free with a wish. Remember: you

roar the sweat off the sun. You,
wax clabber the new moon. You,

honey gold.

American

—for my great grandparents for crossing the border as children, and for my grandma, Theresa Castaños, who spit hell at anyone who had anything to say about it.

Born of Mexican blood into a white skin,
I couldn’t understand why we all
propped old Glory like a talisman
outside our homes. James Brown, Cracker Jacks,
Monopoly. Sucking sugar from
ice cold, sweating bottles of
Coca Cola, We are American!
Grandma would rocket red glare,
a bomb exploding anytime anyone
asked us, What are you?

Grandpa was a Marine and
in the weeks before he died
he’d smile while describing
how it was going to go down:
a bugler playing loud and slow,
us grieving in our Sunday best as
Marines marched to his casket.
Standing straight they’d salute him,
hand over the flag to us.

My Grandparents rest now under big skies,
almond orchards blooming, fruiting,
laying bare as the years build
since we last said, Goodbye.
In my life I have wondered,
do Americans make enough tamales
at Christmas time to feed all
of their friends and family? Do Americans
have cousins named Paco and Raul and
do Americans douse their tri-tip and chicken in salt
and lemon, roast it until they salivate
at the sizzling, charred skin?
Can Americans suddenly burst
into frantic fits of Spanish
when they are tired of holding everything
inside, so tightly choked in stars and stripes?
But, as I always have, I know,
Yes. Sí. See,
of course we do.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Court Castaños‘s poems have appeared in The Nasiona, San Joaquin Review Online, and Boudin. Castaños grew up adventuring along the Kings River in the San Joaquin Valley and now resides in Santa Cruz, Calif.

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.

Geraldine Connolly
To a Woodpecker

In the half dark
after a night of bad dreams
I hear you rattle the fireplace’s metal cap,
a windshield at the top of the chimney

On top of the finishing,
you hammer and broadcast
to the world that
you own this yard
and are looking for a mate.

Are you looking for treasure, or
like Slavic folklore, announcing
a death? Watching infections
multiply each day
I dream of coffins floating
one by one into the sea.

I wake and as each soul has left the world,
you sound your drumroll.
I begin to count the persistent taps
but then I hear fifty, a hundred,
a thousand, and lose count.

—Submitted on 06/22/2020

Geraldine Connolly is the author of Province of Fire (Iris Press, 1998), Aileron (Terrapin Books, 2018), and other collections. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, SWWIM, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland Arts Council, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and the Cafritz Foundation. She lives in Tucson. Online at  geraldineconnolly.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.

Kelly Hegi
Unwanted

I don’t want the deposit
I don’t care if it’s more
I want to work

I don’t want to stay safe
Safety is an illusion in a home full of strife
I want to work

I don’t want to be grateful
Save your judgement for someone less real
This is where I’m at today

I want to work

—Submitted on 04/27/2020

Kelly Hegi lives in Minneapolis with her husband, three kids, and two dogs. 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.

Ed Meek
The Crown

This king of viruses wants to thank you
For hosting. We couldn’t have survived
Without your help. We would like
To apologize for spoiling the party
And making you ill, but there’s a price
For everything in this life
And that’s the price you pay
For hosting. Next time
Don’t cage the bats.
Don’t play the pangolin.
Meanwhile, gracias, danke, merci
For the chance to travel
All over the world.

—Submitted on 06/19/2020

Ed Meeks is the author of High Tide (Aubade Publishing, 2020), Luck (Tailwinds Press, 2017), Spy Pond (Prolific Press, 2015), What We Love (1st World Publishing, 2007), and Flying (Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). His poems have appeared in Blue Mountain Review, First Literary Review East, Red Wheelbarrow Review, Constellations, Aurorean, 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.

Christopher Braciszewski
Timelessness

Forever never felt like much
Until we wept for a hand to hold
Lonely smoldering cauldron
This life is embolden with hypocrisy
Shouting loudly for justice in a small room
Timelessness, effortless, and beguiled
Soft eyes, soft hands, soft lips
Hard times not fixed
We miss the universal you
We miss the world we once knew
Could there be a second where we hold one another,
Where we all agree that each other is the one and be still in that love
Does your heart beat in sync?
Does it beat in fashion and fortitude?
Masterful pulse of cryptic layers
Hollow tree with a hole to fill
Void next door, Opens calm
We all have the pieces but no puzzle
To connect the dots and see the answer
The question was never
Will we be alone forever?
But are we forever alone?
Timelessness, effortless, and beguiled

—Submitted on 04/26/2020

Christopher Braciszewski is the co-founder, with Charlotte Miller and John Harris, of EST, a San Diego-based band that has been described as an amalgam of shoegaze, dark wave, and goth influences. In a recent interview, Braciszewski says of their music, “As humans we have so much untapped knowledge that can aid in the access to bettering ourselves and this understanding can help us all adapt to the externality of the ever changing world through creativity as expression and art as experience.”

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.

George Neame
Two Poems

Liquorice Nighttime

Marmalade lamplight at the
windowpane, tubs of chinese takeaway
ageing on the coffee table
where cars still set their headlights.
In this latitude and on this carpet
we lose sight of the little victories
won in an afternoon spin cycle
or fitness classes in the kitchen
and instead we regret the things
we push onto each other’s lips;
time, night, rice, liquor.

The New Normal

*
the scent of warm rainwater
was enough to remind us that
a previous existence once spiralled
behind our curtains, and because the
streetlight still needs re-bulbing we know
that it somehow still survives like that hour
we lost somewhere close to a midnight
at the receding end of March but we never
really lost because we used our own fingers
when we collectively wound it out of existence
*
and while we waited and wondered how
an hour, a month, a springtime could be
handled and tangible and ticking in our hands
but also empty as the husk of a chestnut
we became a rally of repelling magnets
and evaded each other on pavements
the way black peppercorns evade soapy fingers
*
in warm water. now our doubts spread quicker
than bacteria and now fear cultivates fear the way a
rotting pink lady in our fruit bowl hastens
the decay of its intimate co-conspirators—
suspicions ricocheted off satellites,
misinformation in internet cables—
and now idleness is a virtue not a sin,
*
and now we answer the world’s first call
to inaction, because when we are reborn
we will say that we would have wound
an hour out of every day if we knew we
would inhale one more time
*
the second-hand smoke of a beer garden
and the scent of warm rainwater
peppering ash trays and rinsing the foam
from the urn of a pint glass.

—Submitted on 06/20/2020

George Neame‘s poems have appeared in Acumen, Antiphon, The Moth, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Having lived in Tennessee, Dublin and Yorkshire, he now lives in London.

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.

Anthony Chesterfield
Three Poems

Clean Air Under a Corona

I am taking cleaner breaths at work. My lungs expand—happy to let oxygen—
Enable them to sag like hammocks—Occupied by some lazy man
On a beach without a care in the world.
Down the hall, a resident’s chest collapses.
This morning, he ate the Product 19, along with an omelet
This morning I ate the Product 19, along with a hard—boiled egg
The shipment of cereal came in last night from upstate.
The ears of wheat were harder to husk—they were more hardy
Less riddled with carbon from automobiles.
When the farmer harvested them, they were not drooping,
They were not hunched, not curved over
Like some druids singing incantations to a wrathful god.
This healing of the earth is to my benefit, not to his.
Didn’t we both just breathe the same air?
Shouldn’t we both reap what we sow?

Too Many Rules

Ever since COVID—19 hit, I’ve been in the company of misery.
The phone rings. It rings with the same urgency as
the nurses hands that are trying to pump life into a man who has been dead for an hour.
He won’t be brought back—But—because of a paper he signed three years ago, our hands are tied. I’ve been expecting this call. I’ve been warned of the sibling dynamics.

The hatred, the anger, the subterfuge—I’d hoped that the virus—
which has just struck their father down—
Would have them grow up. Put their differences aside.
And by doing so saved me from having to utter this trope—which in its own right is the hangman to my psyche. I measure the words in my mind. Twenty—four, two dozen, two score, doesn’t matter how I quantify them, they will be my noose.

I can’t tell you what you want to know.
You are on the list of people I can talk to—
But not about that.

I pick up the receiver:
“Hello, my name is X I am Y’s son can you tell me about his medical state.
“I am sorry, I can’t tell you about your loved one’s medical condition.”
“Why?”
“You are not the health—care proxy, and are not on the contact list”
“But you actually pick up the phone—unlike the doctor”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“Just read the chart.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re heartless. He could be dead for all I know”—Click.

He is—He is.
As I hang up, the nurse Purells her hands. She wanted to wash them earlier—there was no hope.
I’m shaking. Aren’t rules made to be broken? Had they been, my deceased patient’s ribcage wouldn’t be shattered—and my heart would not be leaping out of my chest.

Nursing Home Under Siege

You are thirty percent empty on both fronts—Staff and patients
Admissions have ceased—and—the morgue—is overflowing.
Every day, a third of workers are out sick.

Good intended leaders, pontificating—
With the same degree of elegance
As today’s shit in yesterday’s bedpan.

When normality returns will I genuflect to a culpable conscience?
I’m only one person. I can’t be all things to all men.
I can only clock in early, clock out late
I can only check out if my chest is achy
If I run a temperature, have cough

Our census is down two hundred.
Every day we see the morning star
We wait for that influx from the hospitals
Whose harbinger graces the papers daily.
The DOH, unreliable as a squeaky hinge,
Changes protocol with such abruptness
Causing our PT therapists to feel like lapdogs
To a circumspect Dr. Jekyll whose alter—ego Hyde
Paints a retrospective of second guessers.

For the past two weeks, it’s been Death’s birthday every day.
He has become so complacent—
He has forgotten how to hand out party favors
He risks the same anonymity I experience at work
Where social workers become chaplains—
Chaplains become nurses’ aides and doctors—
Doctors become shadows of their former selves as they are rotated out weekly.

The anxiety ridden home
Whose mission to bring comfort
Has been suspended
For him to gloat over
Have his cake—and eat it too.

—Submitted on 04/26/2020

Anthony Chesterfield is the author of Death’s Strife (XlibrisUS, 2018). A social worker pursuing an MFA at Manhattanville College, he lives in Bedford Hills, NY, with his wife, three daughters, and three cats.

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.