Michael H. Levin
In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden

(The Cloisters, Upper Manhattan, May)

This capital I’m gazing at
resolves into a cat-faced Devil—
he’s just swallowed a soul.
His thin smile spans a limestone block
where frog-eyed minions prod roped sinners
toward roaring flames of Hell.
One’s upside down—kicked shanks trail
round the corner, ready to be hurled.

Meanwhile a medieval square of
daffodils and gentians bobs
softly in a breeze that brushes
their living carpet, sighing
through potted orange trees
and sun-splashed colonnades.

Ease, buttressed by sandstone
certainty: a riot of petaled
flares and stars where terrors
of Below are checked by chiseled
images—its snarling beasts
faith-tamed. Watching streaked sparrows

twitter down to sip at fountains
salvaged from ruined convents at Bonnefont
or Cux, I finish off my baguette crust
and contemplate grave courtesies
that nodding lavender and rose
still offer up in stained-glass hues,
defying these less hallowed times
upon their sward of grass.

Michael H. Levin is the author of the poetry collections Man Overboard (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Watered Colors (Poetica Publishing, 2014). His work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Adirondack Review, and Crosswinds, among other journals and anthologies. Levin works as an environmental lawyer and solar energy developer, and lives in Washington DC. See michaellevinpoetry.com.

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Cheryl Caesar
Letter to Our Lady

Heart of the city’s first heart, you parted
the waters, sent up spires, and bent
over your people with protecting arches.

Inside it was always cool, summer and winter,
with the comforting smell of granite dust.
The windows were blue saturated with red,
red tinged with blue. Like venous
and arterial blood. When I entered,
my breathing slowed, my blood pressure went down.
Inside, the city fell away.
Inside was quiet as the womb.

They say no one set you ablaze
with rags and gasoline, as in Opelousas.
No one pierced your towers with suicide planes.
It just happened—or you did it to yourself,
like that Buddhist monk who haunted my childhood,
self-immolating in a silent, endless loop,
with Watts, with Detroit, then with the Twin Towers.

Now in that silent film I see
towers all over the world falling, one by one.
Silently saying, humans, we can no longer stand for you.
We cannot protect you while you destroy yourselves.
Why do you mourn a building, and burn your world?

Poems by Cheryl Caesar have appeared in Writers Resist, The Mark Literary Review, Agony Opera, Cream and Crimson, Total Eclipse, Prachya, The Trinity Review, The Mojave River Review, Panoply and Winedrunk Sidewalk, among other venues. Caesar holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She lives in East Lansing and teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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Frances Mac
250th Anniversary of the Birth of President Andrew Jackson

An adaptation of Donald Trump’s remarks made on March 15, 2017

what to tell
of a son
his mark
what is it
a heritage to mar
a cork in years

to tell that
backwoods glory
of grit
of the frontier
fatal

what was it
was the son
defied
arrogant
familiar

to know
the captured
shine of it
the gashes
and scars
the blows

that son
the people
he drove
from america
that he claimed

merging like clay
the sickening story
into triumph
the act warned
of the removed
the force
to sweep out

what was accused
is a portrait now
a great magnolia
a people
their dignity
the flawed justice
bestowed

remember
the muscle
and bone
of country

Poems by Frances Mac have appeared in Epigraph Magazine, Burnt Pine Magazine, The MacGuffin, and Santa Clara Review. She hails from the Texas Hill Country and currently lives in Washington, DC.

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Jane Yolen
Choosing Rapture

There is a choice, you know,
rupture or rapture,
a single vowel of change.
Take to the countryside,
or stay in the brangle
of politics and war.
My choice of course.
But not all have the option
laid so openly at their feet.

I live on a farm full
of the mysteries of the world,
not the miseries.
In this small holding,
deer hunch over the long grass,
a green deli,
bobcats with corded muscles
stalk their own tales.
Coyotes in predator peer groups
make their endless rounds,
geese gossip before each take off,
and possum practices death
whenever I come into view.

Just watching them soothes the rupture,
irons over the hard wrinkles
of this modern life.
I ignore the harsh realities,
giving in to rapture,
a moment of true reality,
as sharp as a story,
as metaphoric as a poem.

Jane Yolen is a poet, novelist, children’s book writer, essayist, short story writer, and lyricist. To date, she has published 376 books, 10 of them poetry collections for adult readers. She has won many awards for her work, including two Nebulas, two Golden Kite Awards, a Caldecott Medal, two Christopher Medals, a New England Public Radio Arts & Humanities award, and three World Fantasy awards. Six colleges and universities have granted her honorary doctorates. Yolen writes, “But awards can be dangerous. One set my good coat on fire.”

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Todd Heldt
On Wanting My Dentist to Accept the Void

When I ask my dentist how long
it will take, he vomits a smile
and tells me, That’s a good question.
I want to rip his utensils
out of my mouth, throttle his neck
and say that the only good question
is one that cannot be answered.
So I listen to his Christian
radio station in silence and admire
the gold cross pinned to his lapel.
We are the struggle of function
and philosophy, a wound-up arm
aimed at the edge of the cosmos.
I want to land a bullshit fist
knuckled in the iron of know-how
on the rugged jawline of normal,
and I need him to understand.
But he seems content to be
a dentist and does not recognize
the supernova threat we confront.
On his father’s right hand Jesus tells me
forgive everyone everything,
even aspartame they offer
instead of cane sugar’s soul-sweat work.
I used to study my Bible,
and think I got it, and pray to die
before it all stopped making sense.
I still have not figured out why
we exist or what we are supposed
to be doing down here on our own.
Over the gurgling suck of the vacuum
I mumble he proves creation
pointless, and if we must submit
because the blueprints were drawn with no ruler
I would just as soon my teeth fall out.
He smiles his toothy grin, and says,
It will take a long time. I don’t mind.
I am used to this waiting.
Most of my life I’ve been boxing
with God, and my dentist is the worst
kind of coach—Keep your guard up,
he tells me. No kidding, I say,
as if sugar weren’t sweet, this were
all easy, and the paintings
on his walls were art. The answer
I want cannot be answered,
and he does not seem to realize
a question has even been asked.
If he drills down to my softest spot,
we will still never get anywhere.
I will suffer my best in silence.
It hurts when the blows rain down
but I keep my guard up. No matter
who is on the right, if I’m wrong
God’s got a wicked left hook.

Todd Heldt is the author of Card Tricks for the Starving (Ghost Road Press, 2009). His work has appeared in 2AM Muse, Blast Furnace, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Fear of Monkeys, Gyroscope Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many other journals. Heldt is a librarian in Chicago.

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Harriet Marquis
Any Part You Send (Dissociation I)

Who’s Here Today?
I’ll speak with any part you send…
This mismatched brood
of birds you bring
from crows to wrens

appear a flock of friends
who cannot share
the station you pretend is theirs.

God knows, I know
your parts provide protection
from the past, and so
I’ll speak with anyone you care to send.

Could there be one who knows the truth
the others dare not tell?
For sure your raucous cry and sword-like beak
portend to do me in.

And yet you’ll see I’ll not
my role depart
or from my chair descend.
The seat you choose
though small is yours. In time
you’ll grow within it.

We’ll plan a meeting soon.

For now, I’ll hear the cries
from each of you in turn,
till one arrives to sing for all. Till then
I’ll speak with any part you send.

Harriet Marquis is a retired psychoanalyst and former English teacher, currently living in Charlotte, NC. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, the Journal of New Jersey Poets, and Open Minds Quarterly.

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Alana Hayes
Eat.

Eat the man who calls himself your master.
Eat your soft voice.
Eat your tender heart.
show him your body is made of unbreakable things.
show him how difficult it is to dissect you
and place your body parts into piles based on value.
Eat his words
when he blames you for the ways other people try to treat your body
because it must be your fault.
chew them up and spit them back in his face
so that he knows how bad they taste.
return the plate
and demand to speak to the chef.
tell your story.
tell him what it’s really like.
cook the meal yourself.
stir it all into the pot
then Eat
and Eat and Eat.
don’t let the world starve you.

Alana Hayes is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she received a BA in English Literature and another in Women and Gender Studies. Her poetry revolves around themes of Judaism, feminism, and social justice issues. Follow her on Instagram @womanasriot.

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Erin Lynn Marsh
Benefit Concert for an Overdose

—Nomad World Pub, Minneapolis

I think I was my brother tonight;
I recognized his specific misery onstage—screaming
into the dense, muscled body
of the audience. Absorption
was not a choice—the shock of their loss
pulsing the bottoms of my feet. When
I ask my beloved to massage my soles,
draw out the toxins of disbelief and anger,
he refuses—tells me it is dangerous
to handle such built up grief. It is best
to take off my socks, soak my feet
in a plastic tub of ice water, shave
my frozen heels, boil down the deafening shards.

Erin Lynn Marsh is the author of the poetry collection Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives and works in Bemidji, MN.

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Cordelia M. Hanemann
out of the ruins

time of exile		time of trial
gauntlet thrown down		the call
who are we	can we be who we
have always thought we were

blizzards loom on distant	horizons
blasts of cold		gather
your allies	gather your warm clothes
gather your tools	you will need

it all		but mostly you will need
yourself	   leave your weapons	      leave
your diplomas		your acquisitions	your
cushy space	   your wife	    your husband

your mother father sister brother children
or	take them with you	the road
beckons	the gate is open	sirens
are wailing in the town	the news

is not good	you will need all
that you've become	    to find the way through
to find the way there		and to find the way
back	    take your memories		your hopes

all that you've aspired to be	    and more
the world may seem indifferent	but
it is not	it's a mean one	     every zone
a war zone	   where the cost is you

where the peace is spoiled 	no matter 
who wins	but you	   take your poems
and your stories and your music	take
your heart	    warmed by a flask of hope

because you are the good	and you
cannot beat them	at this most dangerous
game	    those other ones	you are
the chosen	all of you	   skulking

for now in the shadows	of your blood-haunted streets
crumbling walls	pocked with bullet-spray
broken glass of cracked windows	doors
on hinges	your town upended	    destroyed

the other city		the frightening city
of steel and concrete towers
of flashing lights and raucous laughter
hyenas 	braying in self-satisfaction

has sprung up in its ashes	casting shadows
over familiar landscapes	   no language of salvation
no poets	prophet is (dis)spelled by profit
the steeple	   a bank	the only god 	a god of business

the golden-haired boy has saved the world
for the card-sharks	the bad boys who hold
the hands	the hands of the poor in shackles
make the rules		make the lists      check them twice

you	are the alien who walks in the dark
the moon	hiding in the cold night
you	are the lost one	finding the road
by the stones you left behind		to mark

the way	but the wild dogs are mad
they are howling at the hoped-for full
moon in the days to come	who has
the full-house      the royal-flush	the biggest

baddest guns of all 	   will win	and when 
the smoke clears	the wages of sin
will have been paid	    the deadliest
game…	it has all been	   just…	housecleaning

you should return home	come
bring your children and your heart and your stories
and all you have learned from your own
dark journey--come home to what's

left	you have the goods to re(dis)cover
America	make her over		shed the mis-
takes 	    rebuild the house	   till the yard
reach out your hands		to your new neighbors

Poems by Cordelia Hanemann have appeared in Turtle Island Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Glassworks Magazine, and Laurel Review.  Hanemann holds a PhD in English literature from Louisiana State University. A native of Southwest Louisiana, she now lives in Raleigh, NC.

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Aurora Lewis
from A Fairmount Narrative

But Group is about to begin. There are
thirty of us, all women, some full grown,
though Millie is only 16. Snow pale,
green veins running deep beneath translucent
skin. You’d call her beautiful
and the nurse who raped her would agree.
She’s open about it, though, not resigned
and weepy or wilting silently; her
favorite word is bastard, as in That no
good dirty bastard thought that he could
own me. Fuck that. They say she’ll be out of
here soon, and one day maybe even free.
We sit in a circle of chairs, unless
you’re Em or Bertha. Then you’re slumping sloppy;
Em coasts by on a Methadone high, and
the Seroquel hits Bertha like a freight.
Doc must have set her straight; she’s fairly
docile and drooling on the floor. Upped her
meds—when she wakes she’ll call it mind-rape,
while Em will ask for more. Em got into
sex work and heroine, but ended up
homeless. She had to choose between a room
or her daily fix, and the drugs liked her best.
Bertha is schizophrenic, once jailed for
attacking a weed-dealing boyfriend
prone to violence. Claimed it was self-defense–
judge disagreed. When lucid, she inveighs
against the prison guards who Raped her up
the ass! Edits are supplied by a nurse,
with the timid suggestion of: Cavity-searched.

Editor’s Note: “from A Fairmount Narrative” is a section of a larger work in progress. Other sections may appear in future What Rough Beast posts.

Aurora Lewis is a recent graduate of Haverford College. This is her first poetry publication.

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