Devon Balwit
We Went Willingly

All those climbers peeling off the North Face—
Broken rope. Rock fall. Avalanche.
Slip. Wrong carabiner. Storm. Reading,

I get vertigo, press a hand to my chest,
heart like a rock hammer. Ting. Ting. Ting.
A region of unquiet weather.

The dead, younger than I, wanted,
beyond measure, to summit. To add their names
to those who reached the peak.

Some set off with bread alone. Some took
no jacket. Some declined help when needed.
Some bedded down in snow caves

or spent the night clipped upright to rock.
One poor man stood for days on a ledge
awaiting rescue before the wind

swept him from his perch and he succumbed,
dangling over a year in harness, a draw
for the hotel guests below who watched

his body sway when the weather cleared.
To those who don’t feel it, there’s no explaining
the lure of extremity, the slog

past delirious, the summitting,
the giddiness that takes us down
the far side at three a.m. to accolades.

Before we begin, we coil our rope
and sharpen our crampon tips. We visit
the graveyard at the mountain’s foot,

saluting each monument to the failed
attempt then creeping upwards,
leaving our scat on the snow.

Either we will arrive, or we will
be gathered up. There’s no question
of avoiding the mountain.

Devon Balwit is the author of A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Poets Reading the News, The NewVerse News, The Ekphrastic Review, Peacock Journal, and more. For more of her poetry, reviews, collections, and chapbooks, visit her website, devonbalwitpoet.

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Amy Gordon
Faceless

It’s so easy without a face to blend into a crowd.
I stand close to that mother, smelling flowers on her neck.
She should not wear perfume when I am near.
She is bending over, trying to adjust the stroller.
Her baby’s blanket is caught beneath a wheel.
I have no mother. I never was a baby. I have no memory.
Trained early to steal, my long, sticky fingers ooze
into her bag made of old blue-jeans.
Perhaps her grandmother sewed it for her
one April morning. I never had a grandmother.
I carry a satchel made of skin. What I want,
when I steal, is a mouth. If I could speak,
I would scream, but I have no tongue,
only unloved fingers. All I can do, every day,
is tap evil into the world. I want my words
to give me a face. I want a face,
and I want it emblazoned on every cloud,
so when it rains, my features drizzle into cups of coffee.
What I retrieve from the woman’s mockingbird’s nest
is a nail. What does she think she is going to build?
A shelf for plates? A book case for books?
I will pierce ordinary pleasures with her nail,
and replace them with nothing so I can have a face.

Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).

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Amy Gordon
Dear America

I want to stand hand on heart
in front of a star-spangled banner,
but each time a hint of elementary
school halleluiah rises to my lips,
I remember I trusted you once.
I was a child who believed the men
in white hats didn’t have to be white.
I believed the men in black hats
would go to jail. When we sang those songs
in music class, the Navy hymns, the battle
hymns, the spirituals where men’s hearts
are broken, I thought all that—war,
and the breaking of men’s hearts,
was in the past.

Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).

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Lydia Cortes
Find the Form to Love Your Life (Section 5)

If even poor of money clothes you had a roof above      Your head that head with the hole right on top there      On your skull where you felt the cold when the land lord      The lord of the land on Stockton St in Williamsburg the      Lord of the land on Ryerson St in Fort Greene in the      Tenements where you and your family your Mami your      Papi your little sis and little bro lived always wondering      Will we have heat today the silent radiators were sadness      Personified the water icy too icy to bathe to shower only      Barely tolerable to take a puta’s bath in the ponchera      The basin why did we call the basin the ponchera did it      Somehow come from word punch ponchera where you      Put the punch in where you scooped it out with a ladle      And poured it into your cup the punch the kool aid we      Drank so many envelops full of crystals purple red orange      Thousands of crystals melded with sugar so much sugar

Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections on consecutive Saturdays.

Lydia Cortes is the author of the poetry collections Lust for Lust (Ten Pell Books, 2002) and Whose Place (Straw Gate Books, 2009). Her work appears in the anthologies Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times (U Mass Press, 2006) and Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012 (Editorial Campana, 2012). Recent work has appeared in Upstreet and on the Black Earth Institute’s 30 Days Hath September poetry feature curated by Patricia Spears Jones.

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Jessica Ramer
Knit Purl

Jitterbugging all night to Benny Goodman’s swing,
His wife flushed as stocking tops showed under maroon
Taffeta folds whirling in time to “Sing Sing Sing.”

The band struck up “Moonglow”; they swayed in a cocoon
Spun by their arms. He breathed with her, inhaled her scent—
Their steps keeping time to the alto sax’s croon.

Demobbed after the war, Fahrsleben, two months spent
Lugging Belsen’s still-dying survivors—that girl
Who smiled at him—to the white canvas morgue tent,

He sat in the dark, would not look at sheets unfurl
On clotheslines, hunched when wooden knitting needles thunked
Like dirt shoveled on a mass grave: Scrape. Thud. Knit. Purl.

Jessica Ramer is a third-year PhD student in poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi.

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John Martino
In Light of All the Darkness

“Jesus,
I could have
killed someone!”

cries the enlightened
bullet, suddenly
going vertical

and putting on
the brakes,
shrieking to

a halt, lifting
its metal
visor like

a sweating welder,
a startled
knight.

John Martino‘s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, HEArt Online, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and the anthology Envy, Vol. 6 from a 7-volume series on the 7 deadly sins by Pure Slush Books. He has worked as a teacher and tutor of English for 22 years. An avid traveler, Martino currently resides in Hong Kong with his wife, Shelley.

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Jacqueline Jules
Fun Facts for a Conservative Court

Sea otters sleep
holding hands.

Swans mate for life.

Wolves live
in tight knit packs.

Whiptail lizards breed
without men.

Kangaroos have three vaginas.

Koalas have a double penis.

Monkeys masturbate.

Clownfish switch gender.

Same sex coupling occurs
across the animal kingdom.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications, 2014), and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Evening Street Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize. Her poetry has appeared in The Broome Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Hospital Drive, and Imitation Fruit, among other periodicals. She is also the author of 40 books for young readers. Visit jacquelinejules.com.

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Devon Balwit
You seek reverie

but get chainsaw,
neighbors hard at work
to obliterate the moment.

How tempting to flare
like an ordinary match—
practice asks

that you turn inward.
Surprisingly,
it can be done.

Devon Balwit is the author of A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Poets Reading the News, The NewVerse News, The Ekphrastic Review, Peacock Journal, and more. For more of her poetry, reviews, collections, and chapbooks, visit her website, devonbalwitpoet.

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Shannon Lippert
Trouble Shooter

if you drop them into the wishing-well
who knows if it will make a sound?
have you ever seen clearly
out of eyes so jagged? smoky like Seattle
your world buggered without sleep
or is that not a polite term for it anymore?

the news is all about girls with pinchable cheeks
but your gray walls are littered with women with talons
it’s not possible to hide from them
not with your pink flesh and bad habits breaking
they were peeking through the fingers and
you were made out of their sharp hands

they danced with you, called on you
like an overworked goddess, they knew
you were trouble when you walked in the door
when we said take aim for the stars
you should have known we were coming for you
they joke, laughter, these cruel little courtesies they do for you

they couldn’t quite figure you out
it’s only when you put your finger on it
pointing to the parts of you that once a woman might have adored
that you realize you’re speaking another language
one that harpies dare not whisper
and only sparrows understand

one perches on your shoulder, and she has such pretty eyelashes
coaxing, looking up at you,
you beg for a glimpse of their chirpy sweet voices
drowning in the decay you’ve surrounded yourself with
thinking you might be like a crow, littered
with shiny things.

Shannon Lippert is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in episode 55 of the Glittership podcast, and has been published in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, among other journals.

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Lydia Cortes
Find the Form to Love Your Life (Section 4)

Remember the fontanel the hole in your crown      That never quite closed your skull vulnerable      Ever since they poured the holy water right over      That venerable spot where things can be let out      But also let in let in the sun and the shine too don’t      Be stingy giving accommodations on the cheap to      Things to the best things which may or not be free      To be free you and me and the bees those that still      Survive to be and flee or fly or stay in one place hovering      In place when there’s something interesting to observe      To be near to to be part of to be a party to to party till      There’s no manana there’s only today only the now      Only the process forget the end the ends of the earth      Are there to be be you and me and be explored on      Streets of sesame and rogering on with the mister      The good mister the good guy who didn’t care if    You spoke English or not you were still worthwhile     

Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections. While today’s section appears on a Sunday, most of the sections appear on consecutive Saturdays. 

Lydia Cortes is the author of the poetry collections Lust for Lust (Ten Pell Books, 2002) and Whose Place (Straw Gate Books, 2009). Her work appears in the anthologies Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times (U Mass Press, 2006) and Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012 (Editorial Campana, 2012). Recent work has appeared in Upstreet and on the Black Earth Institute’s 30 Days Hath September poetry feature curated by Patricia Spears Jones.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections on consecutive Saturday’sS