Ute Carson
Secret Anniversaries

There is something different in every aching heart:
Awareness of death
as when a butterfly landed in the palm of my hand,
wings heavy, baked by heat, failing.
Awareness of failure
as when, betting all my money on that spotted horse,
my fortune seeped through my fingers like sand.
Awareness of loss
as when I stormed into the night fog
after a blustery quarrel with my partner,
her words icy darts, “I don’t love you anymore.”

There is something different in every jubilant heart:
Dawning of love
as when through flickering candlelight
sparks ignite in recognition and we are on fire.
Dawning of beauty
as when breastmilk sweet as honey
becomes an amber river
that nourishes new life.
Dawning of freedom
as when there is no longer the need
to place feelings under a bell jar
but to let them shine.

When the last anniversary dawns on the horizon
I hope to celebrate with few regrets but
much gratitude for a wondrous ride!

Ute Carson is the author of the poetry collections Just A Few Feathers (PlainView Press, 2011), Folding Washing (Willet Press, 2013) and Reflections: New and Selected Poems (Plain View Press, 2018), as well as two novels, a novella, and numerous essays and short stories. Born in the Polish city of Koszalin, Carson fled her native city during World War II, settling in Germany before coming to the United States in 1962. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, a horse and a number of 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.

Deborah Bacharach
Surely Goodness and Mercy

At mom’s death bed, I ask
the minister for the twenty-third psalm.
I want the King James version
yeah, lo.

I don’t know about faith,
God’s protection. Mom was sort of done
with them too, but I
want to hear the words flicker and glow.
The minister starts:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want I forget the rest of the words.
The minister forgets.
When he forgets, I forget. All my breath
is in Mom’s lungs inching its way
to her heart just one more time. I can’t

reach for my phone shoved in with the crumpled up
parking lot receipts, granola wrappers, hair ties
I towed in and out as if that could
empty the days of drudgery.

The nurse says, The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want. Time flows again. We walk with him
all the way through annointest my head with oil
as he had anointed Mom’s body.

Nurses are not supposed to pray
for your son who has cancer or tell you Jesus
will take away your craving. They are not supposed to
say He restoreth my soul.

I’m tired, really tired
walking alone.
I want someone to go before
me and my mother holding
a rod and staff,
a candle.

Deborah Bacharach is the author of After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has appeared in the journals Vallum, Poetry Ireland Review, Sweet, and Midwest Quarterly, among others, as well as in the anthologies Jump Start: A Northwest Renaissance Anthology (Steel Toe Books, 2009), edited by Lonny Kaneko, Pat Curran, and Susan Landgraf; A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books, 2002), edited by Margarita Donnelly, Beverly McFarland, and Micki Reaman; and Sex and Single Girls (Seal Press, 2000), edited by Lee Damsky. Bacharach is a writing tutor in the Seattle. More online at DeborahBacharach.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.

Doug Van Hooser
A live trap

Capturing a skunk creates a problem.
They turn tail and spray dismay.
Such distain leaves a sense of unforgiving,
a scent of arrogance
not capitulation.
This attitude inclines for ridicule,
but is skunk nonchalance.
This abysmal reaction,
dissuades one from a serious discussion
to sort out the skunk’s complaint.
But what allows the skunk to dine and defecate
wherever his self-righteousness saunters,
and blare like a trumpet his dissonant stink<
all thin and thick skin absorbs?
The odor: a dye of words that discolors,
a stain that cannot be dissolved.
A tattoo time does not erase.

Doug Van Hooser‘s poems have appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, After Hours and Poetry Quarterly, among other journals. His fiction has appeared in Red Earth Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Bending Genres Journal. Van Hooser’s plays have received readings at Chicago Dramatist Theatre and Three Cat Productions. More at dougvanhooser.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.

Pamela Ahlen
Pervasive Invasive

No cultivar
twines the pine,

a weeping misery
needing more than calamine.

The bitchin’ itch
doesn’t come on like a rose,

isn’t pretty as a daisy,
drives some of us crazy

as oily words oozing out
misogynistic throats.

Goats chew it up
[the shiny three-leaf kind]

then poop it out with immunity.
But I ask you, blistered sisters,

what antidote
can eradicate that other creep unlikely to go anytime extinct?

Pamela Ahlen is the author of the chapbook Gather Every Little Thing (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, The Adirondack Review, Birch Song Anthology among others. She is the program coordinator for Bookstock Literary Festival held each summer in Woodstock, Vermont. Pamela organizes literary events for Osher (Lifelong Education at Dartmouth) and has compiled and edited the Anthology of Poets and Writers: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years at Dartmouth.

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.

Anna Leah
Liberty

On the night they re-elected their dictator,
he climbed me to the top of Freedom
above rallying song of those fueled
by viktory and patriotism and wild unison.
Their dancing may tear this country apart
fueled by forest seed, bloom liquor, and venison
so intoxicated with beating bare chests they move.

Weighed only with power of enchantment and song
soaring in corkscrew gait
he is sure-footed on their shrines.

Chains of change scare him
but not their danger.
He fears losing the liberty of the wind.

Shakily, I reach out to him
buses quivering the railings
shouts riveting the air.

In his trust, I am suspended in calm.

When the daylight clears,
revealing the mountain mantra of green
absorbing this pull of uncertainty

we’ll see the fertility
free from envy of jaundiced regularity
towards life from rocks
and breaks from unease’s rule.

Anna Leah’s poetry has appeared in Panel Magazine (published in Budapest). Her broadcast and print journalism have appeared on PBS, AJ+, and Brut and in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Post, Brokelyn, and other publications. She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Also a filmmaker, Leah lives in Brooklyn. She posts poetry to Instagram, @ByAnnaLeah.

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.

Dion O’Reilly
Mariana

You have to remember this isn’t your land
it belonged to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours.
—Philip Levine

Why do I drift on memories?
Conjure what I lost, repeat
the loss again and again?

Is it because of a happiness
that rises in me like heat
or fog touched by sun?

It weakens me, invades my skin—

the hope I can hold on
to anything, even my bones.

I heard there was a time when
poets returned to marble tombs
with shovels and axes
to exhume their beloveds—
Emerson’s young bride, two years gone,
held again in his arms.

How many times have I returned
to a mother who savaged me?
Searched for her again and again
in the bodies of men—their eyes,
burnished like hers as she beat me.

Blood prick of a needle, then bliss
while I recut memory’s diamond.

Have you heard of light organs
in creatures who live at such depth,
sunlight refuses to enter?

Luminous glands embed in their skin.
Only in silent darkness, only in the sea,
only in the sting of salt.

Dion O’Reilly is the author of Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books, 2020). Her work has appeared in Narrative, New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Tupelo Quarterly, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, working at various times as a theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher, among other occupations.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value the What Rough Beast series, please consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Kiran Bhat
A stranger on the bus asks: What do you love the most?

一个在公交的陌生人说：你最爱什么？

客然脑说：
抚摸狗的肥胖胡子
看空心电视，
做我的父母高兴。
我在写好的时候休息。

然后客然脑明确了：但是这些东西满足我的精神，不我的身体。

红树林，特别明丽，颜色切我的舌头。

特别包揽的母，它们有龙的照耀。
但是他们不是野生。
我看他们给我想想
一千火。
一百跳舞的吉卜赛人。
我的未来的爱人。

用最古老的交流的工具 –
性高潮，语言， 触动 –
我尝试了解人类。

这些是我的做爱的东西。

A stranger on the bus asks: What do you love the most?

Kiran says:
To pet a dog on its belly.
To watch mindless television.
To make my parents happy.
To rest after writing well.

Kiran then clarifies: but this is how to please my mind and not my body.

A mangrove, so bright, it’s color cuts my tongue.

Eyes so sapphire, they belong to the dragon,
But these are eyes that do not belong to the wild,
A thousand naked flames—
One hundred gypsies in dance—
But to my future lover.

Communicating through the primal tools of humanity to understand another person’s self.

Orgasm, language, touch.

These are a few of my favorite things.

Kiran Bhat is the author of the poetry collections Autobiografia (Letrame Editorial, 2019) and Kiran Speaks (White Elephant Press, 2019), as well as the Kannada-language travelogue Tirugaatha (Chiranthana Media Solutions, 2019) and the novel We of the Forsaken World (Iguana Books, 2019). He has traveled to over 130 countries, lived in 18 different places, and speaks 12 languages. He considers Mumbai his spiritual base, but currently lives in Melbourne.

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.

Jared Pearce
The sky falls.

The cardinal in the first big
snow storm found two
inches of dry branch under
a form of canopy. Still,

as the flakes broke
on the leaves the ice would
biff and bite him, snap
onto the bone of his beak

and jag up his coat and do.
He twirled then cranked
his face, shuffled his clutch

until he gave up in search
of comfort, showing even
minor gods must suffer.

Jared Pearce is the author of The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade Publishing, 2018). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Coachella Review, Xavier Review, Breadcrumbs, BlazeVOX, and Panoplyzine, among other journals.  Online at jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.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.

Lynn McGee
Crush, 12

I’m driving up the West Side Highway and singing,
lungs happy as a sponge finally introduced to water.
I’m sisters with the Hudson River, onyx scratched
with light thrown by high rises on the other side.
I have a new lover and we share a fear of the ocean.
Her favorite place to shop is Lowe’s. She has
a big truck and the strategic intelligence of a wolf.
I throw myself at her like icy drops from air conditioners
embedded in windows high above Park Avenue.
She has never seen tulips growing in the ground.
It’s April in New York, garden boxes ablaze.
I send photos from my phone.

Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two  award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996). Here poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Ontario Review, Phoebe, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun Magazine, and The New Guard, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019), edited by Rusty Rose and Marc Rosen. With José Pelauz, McGee wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020). She serves on the advisory board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series with Gerry LaFemina and Madeleine Barnes. Online at lynnmcgee.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.

Marjorie Moorhead
Glass Half Full Today

On my favorite morning,
I’m sitting near the window

where outside hangs a simple feeder
for the birds. Mostly smaller ones

who can pull black oil sunflower seeds
through the mesh of this painted blue

metal coffee pot shape. They come and go,
come and go, taking turns swooping in,

and off again. It’s early February; a fresh
New England snowfall covers the recent brown-and-exposed.

Light grows stronger, lasts longer. We’re marching
toward votes and valentines. Ready to turn from darkness,

could there be a chance of meaningful change
in the air? On this favorite morning, I am singing

aloud, to the radio, whose station “gets me”.
Beautiful voices; beautiful words

and I sing along with them, feeling the vibration
in my heart. All of a sudden a small bird, different

from the black-capped, white-cheeked little chickadees,
settles on the bird feeder mesh, and lingers awhile.

Touched by the extraordinary sight
of its tomato-red breast under mud-brown wings,

I sing, “Hello lovely! Thank you for appearing”.
Welcome to my favorite morning.

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.

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.