Jeanne Wagner
It’s spring and our lives are closed

until further notice,
camellia trees dropping their blossoms
like sepia ghosts on the stairs,
not just the gardener
but everyone wearing a mask,
now that the air’s an invisible regatta of spores,
every space crammed with cross-pollination,
seeds splitting with desire,
haploids searching for their other half,
desperate for completion
microbes sailing up the bloodstream,
breaking and entering the cloistered cells
like any horde eager to conquer for love
or loot or Lebensraum.
Because we’re all seeds, all seekers, all swarm
and flock and herd.
I’m asking, can’t we just stay indoors
a while longer, turn up the music, let the world,
so worn out from our needs,
restore itself,
let the sky shine like blue glass over the cities,
let seaweed be seen, swaying,
in the bottom of some Venetian canal?

—Submitted on 06/18/2020

Jeanne Wagner is the author of Everything Turns Into Something Else (Grayson Books, 2020), In the Body of Our Lives (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2011), and The Zen Piano Mover (NFSPS Press, 2004), as well as of four chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Florida Review, North American Review, and Southern Review., among other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry (Sundress Press, 2020), edited by Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies.

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.

M.P. Armstrong
sixteen pages of obituaries in the boston globe

and we still have no idea what we would write in ours,
or where we’ll publish when the local paper is listed
among the dead. we have read books where obituaries
disappear, replaced by a list of names on the radio, the
dead reduced to two words and we are never sure if that
is just for sheer numbers’ sake or because anyone who
could have given more detail—their job, their hobbies,
their favorite band—is also dead. where headstones
are replaced by carvings in airplane trays that have
shed euphemisms—joined her lord and savior, fought
a valiant fight, passed away suddenly or quietly at home
or both—in favor of the shorter, simpler “died,” and nothing
matters, not the place you were born or the headstone
you were planning to buy, just the date that you died.
we want more than that. maybe we will start up a nightly
howl of grief, of names released into the night to mourn.
maybe we will sew our eulogies into masks with enough
thread to describe that day at the beach, where she was
more alive than the waves, or the gift he bought you for
your birthday and you suspected he could read your mind.
and for the newspaper, we might carry old editions to
the steps of the statehouse, brandish them like shields
among the protestors, or hang them in the window
next to the american flag in the hopes that someone
driving by will notice the irony. that is, if anyone is still
driving. that is, if anyone is still fighting the valiant
fight, not yet absorbed into the closest sixteen pages.

—Submitted on 04/25/2020

M.P. Armstrong‘s work has appeared in Traveling Stanzas, The Mass, The Cabinet of Heed, Silver Birch Press, Social Distanzine, and other journals. A student at Kent State University, they are managing editor and reporter for Curtain Call and Fusion magazines. Online at mpawrites at on Twitter @mpawrites.

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.

Julie Weiss
Coronaversary, April 12th, 2020

For Olga

Happy anniversary, mi amor, the words I blow
across your pillow like fairy dust every year

to wake you. Today is different. A voice,
quite unlike my own, comes pounding across

my heart and asks: How many people do you think
died yesterday? Our silences fall across each other,

the moment pulled inside out when the children
crawl under our covers, giggling. They’re too

excited about the Easter eggs hidden around
our home to notice the sorrow rumpled

between us. Last year, when your parents
could cup their faces without fear of contagion

and the metro air wasn’t thick with the spirits
of past riders, we indulged in lunch for two

in downtown Madrid, toasted to our marriage
above bustling streets, held hands, unaware

that skin fused in the ardor of an afternoon walk
would one day generate more than electricity.

Today we coax our children into the kitchen
with the promise of chocolate and cartoons.

We have two minutes, and I want to wrap
our love in a metaphor, striking and timeless.

Instead, I clap for us, howl for our family.
I say: We’re lucky to be alive.

—Submitted on 06/18/2020

Julie Weiss‘s poems appear in Praxis Magazine, ArLiJo, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Sky Island Journal, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up The Knife (Kingly Street Press, 2019), edited by Betsy Mars; and Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?: Women Over Forty Write On Aging (Social Justice Anthologies, 2019), edited by Nina Padolf, Janette Schafer, Wendy Scott, and Holly Spencer. Originally from California, Weiss teaches English in Spain, where she lives with her wife and two children. Online at julieweiss2001.wordpress.com/ and on Twitter @colourofpoetry.

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.

Tessa Horn-Botha
Covid-19 Haiku

Elastic shadows;
days, nights fuse in vacuous
corona silence.

Daily, prayers ascend;
brotherhood of burnished hope
tearing fear apart.

Memories surface
creeping stealthily from graves;
times of reflection.

Balcony singers,
chorus of compassion, love;
music’s perfect force.

Tinged global outlook—
rattled stocks quiver and plunge,
futures’ masked forecast.

Forever altered
earth, humanity and sky;
singed, humbled landscape.

—Submitted on 06/13/2020

Tessa Horn-Botha‘s poems have appeared in Ja. Magazine, and in the anthology Breaking the Silence: Painting My Future (People Opposing Women Abuse, 2017). She is a musician and educator from South Africa, now living in Qatar.

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.

Andrea Berns
Home is Where the Spider Lives

They say it’s for safety’s sake,
staying home, not even leaving
for bread or hand soap or a kind face.
But home is where the spider lives,
with his sharp fangs dripping viscous venom.

He has infested the house,
spinning his web of lies
until my life is no longer mine.
And he lurks in every corner,
catching each word
that escapes my skittish mouth,
ensuring no slip of tongue or lips
lends to loved ones’ virtual ears.

And at night when he hungers
he coerces me into his gossamer net,
spins me up until I’m cozy and snug—
and cuts his pincers into my flesh,
drinking in all my doubts:
The virus in here is just as
dangerous as the virus out there.
But he knows well I will never leave,
not even when the world wakes up.

—Submitted on 04/25/2020

Andrea Berns received the Roger Rechenmacher Scholarship Award for Creativity from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, where she received her BA. She holds an MA in English from Illinois State University.

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.

Rebecca Faulkner
The Stillness of Flowers

There can be no flowers
at the burial today,
no deliveries.
The sun will bear down
cruelly, uninvited.
Only room for a minyan,
mourners clutching
the edge of this
necessary distance,
rending the small
space airless,
too tight for breath.

There can be no luncheon
after the burial today.
Not like the one she
would’ve planned for—
vibrant, noisy, catered.
Grandchildren and egg salad,
vases of irises and
the good china, cheer
among the eulogies.

But there can be grief today—
It is not restricted.
Mourning does not need
to be distanced, great
choking sobs quiet
the hum of phone lines
condolences, blessings,
arrive all at once
and slowly—an unfinished
Kaddish, a great wave
cresting, the patter of low tide.

the awareness of both—
the noise and the silence,
the stillness of flowers—
of breath and crescendo.

—Submitted on 06/15/2020

Rebecca Faulkner‘s poems have appeared in Quarantine Zine. A London-born children’s rights advocate and climate activist, she holds an MA in performance studies from NYU, and a PhD in cultural studies from the University of London. Faulkner lives in Brooklyn.

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.

Hareem Fatima Shakoor
Pandemic

Life all at once, came to a standstill
And we got stripped of our free will

Suits and ties have gathered dust
The frantic, corporate world went bust

The silence louder than ever before
Eerie, haunting, like a state of war

Forced to reflect on our priorities
Infinitesimal virus exerted authority

Colors, classes and all creeds
As it turns out, had the same needs

A powerful indication by God
Mighty or meager, we’re peas in a pod

—Submitted on 04/25/2020

Hareem Fatima Shakoor writes: I’m a doctor from Pakistan. I am currently in the UK, where I originally came for the purpose of postgraduate examinations, but unfortunately got stranded due to the terrible situation. With the airspace closed, and having no way of going back, I felt badly stuck, lost and isolated.

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.

D. E. Fulford
Three Poems

In the Beginning, I was a Moth

I burned by Appalachian fog-thoughts when it began
here—in the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains

my slight city, new home, boasts year-round sun-filled
aching days of promise, but this March, it was someway

already sighing assent into slate-bloom of gloom
collecting outside the window—like North Carolina

where life began and not to chop the roots of such
Southern upbringing, but years earlier, I set my

defiance on the shelf, placed shiny baubles before
it, forgot it can help stymie my dread bubbling up

after events lose meaning and pour between my
fingers as so much sand, as ocean in a land-locked state

I abandoned myself there stepped into skin of a
woman who never grasped but always held notion

of the thing that
makes me dream
makes me dance

and never arrives.

Silence is Not

it’s electric fizz
it’s seizing neurons’ song
it’s constriction-clasp stifling
it’s dog breath in a room with no windows
it’s walking away from the fight instead of screaming
it’s black noise-torrential cloudburst mountain monsoons
it’s reclamation, the Mother of pause, when the dirt sighs a little

Two Dumb Syllables

It closed our campus.
It gave us two days to amend,
to push face-to-face curriculum
to a rigorously remote system
where students, now Brady Bunch-ed
now boxed versions of former selves—
sans scents/twitches/breath-sounds—
they exist to me amidst deep snippets
of unintentional intimacy: the clothes

heaped, apathetic boyfriends and crinkled
cans from last night while grinning for my
opinion on their rhetorical advocacy projects
and strangling sobs because Dad is leaving Mom
and it is not virus-related—at least, not
that kind—but also Aunt just tested positive

and her five kids are moving in while she
stays bound to future breaths in a sterile bed
but they have to go now, their second job starts
today and they need to find clean pants and
are planning to finish their project when they
get home that night if boyfriend isn’t gaming

or angry because they got home so late and still,

I have no words to tell them anything they need
right now so I acquiesce, say, “Take care,” and

mean it more than two dumb syllables can give.

—Submitted on 06/16/2020

D. E. Fulford‘s work has appeared in Literati Magazine, Dreamers Magazine, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Sunspot Literary Journal, Inklette Magazine, Aurora, and other journals. A doctoral student at the University of New England, she teaches at Colorado State University. Fulford lives in Colorado with her partner Levi and their chocolate Labrador.

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.

Jennifer Greenberg
Growing

By the end of quarantine I’m all grown out: leg hair, arm hair, chest hair, in between and around, everywhere, hair the way g-d intended. I’m hot and heavy. I’m tuned like a fork and fuzzy on the scruff. Too late to shave, this is my suit now, body of armor against the naysayers—I won’t clean up. I won’t drag the pretty metal against a crotch no one will see, no one will touch. I touch me fine, I touch it enough. There is so much to me, so much life under there, growing a new woman from my skin. How could I kill her off now? We’re becoming such good friends.

—Submitted on 04/24/2020

Jennifer Greenberg‘s poems have appeared in Literary Mama, SWWIM Everyday, Homology Lit, Coffin Bell, and other journals. She is an associate editor at the South Florida Poetry Journal.

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 Stephen Soden
today today today

it was better today i thought to cook
macaroni and cheese with butter
and condensed milk and drove chloe
to the park where i sat on a shiny
painted blue wooden bench and let her

wander the length of the leash while i
took refuge in shades and black
surgical mask why havent i got any
stamina lately my knees and ankles ache
my neck is heavy i was raised by television

and watch for hours and make inane gags
and talk to mother knowing she is content
and vigilant and soaring on the far side
of the veil i welcome the spectacle
of lightning drumming and rolling and smile

to comfort my familars (though i wonder
if benevolent imperialism is humane)
and the rain is lovely when im settled in
my grandad used to say it was crucial to leave
the house at least once every day

for any reason you could find mailing
a letter or getting ice cream or circling
the lake it still helps to find something
truly defiant on the car radio i write now
to a casual friend who shares accounts

of impulsive sexual episodes though
hes not as intrepid as he sounds
finding another guy in the woods
who spits to make penetration
less excruciating but i still write back

i believe a routine (long shower
fresh bright island shirts cologne
two hours refining my poems)
would help rid me of this persistent
queasiness this dull thumping headache
this dread of something inexplicable

will i ever salvage my furious
sister will i have soap for laundry
what will i smear on sardines
will i reconcile with my also dead
father the starving bully i need

the crush of someone without grace
someone who will soothe me
with moist banana and dark red
pintos someone that will kiss me
without terror someone that wont
stop sobbing

—Submitted on 06/16/2020

Christopher Stephen Soden is the author of Closer (Queer Mojo, 2011). His poems have appeared in Assaracus, The Good Men Project, Rattle, The Cortland Review, The James White Review, and other journals, as well as in the a number of anthologies, including Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011), edited by Kevin Simmonds; Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press, 2012), edited by Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz; and Gents, Bad Boys, And Barbarians (Alyson Books, 1995), edited by Rudy Kikel. He lives in Dallas. 

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.