Marilyn Humbert
Where Have All the People Gone

now the night is silent
except for the splutter of a distant truck
and scream of ambulance sirens
at the corner
traffic lights on long cycle
wind rushes down white line
unimpeded by workers heading home
litter pools in shop doorways
where homeless once slept

we meet in twos
behind closed doors, standing
regulation 1.5 metres apart
kids gamer thumbs flicking
TV force-feeds deaths tolls
and infection rate curves
re-runs of a police patrol
startled by a large red ‘roo
nibbling tender nature strip shoots

—Submitted on 04/04/2020

Marilyn Humbert‘s poems have appeared in FemAsia Magazine, Bluepepper, Eureka Street, Backstory, Other Terrain Journal, and other journals and anthologies. Humbert lives in Sydney, Australia.

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.

Megan Rilkoff
A New Habit

This morning, I drank coffee again.
This is a new habit
Of having nowhere to be in the morning.

It fills the time.
Its sweet smell as the beans grind,
The chocolate liquid as it darkens,
How the grinds settle like sand on the glassy bottom.
I drink half of it black.
Dump the rest down the sink.

The rules now are:
Eat when you’re hungry
Move when you’re restless
Stretch when you’re sore
Cry when you can’t go on.
Pour a drink, a bigger drink,
Pretend it’s the weekend.
Pretend it’s vacation.
If we’re lucky, we can trick ourselves
For a moment.

Ironically,
In this April winter of our lives,
Nature is blooming, coming to life.
The red-breasted robins tiptoe up to our front door
And pick at the worms
With a dramatic head banging.
The squirrels screech from the top-most branches.
Chipmunks chirp—have you ever heard a chipmunk chirp?
Its shrill staccatos.
How its tiny body quakes with each force of its lungs.

I wonder if they can sense
How the humans are hibernating,
As their season of quiet waiting
Gives birth to a new freedom.

—Submitted on 04/04/2020

Megan Rilkoff is a middle school English teacher and emerging writer. After teaching in Laos and New York City, she now works in Central Pennsylvania, where she lives with her fiancé.

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.

billy cancel
Ornamental Hermit you’re not wrong

though overcast aluminum is the Underground
Garden     & weird beasts grimacing human faces
peering down at you is what it is     i’d much rather
be pissed off than pissed on in some Cybercurrency
Mining Farm mumbling      “i want to believe Sock
Puppet there’s more than the Mad Minute then
my slide into delay.”         through that endless

     black frost February     we spent too much time
tapping on the glass     & noting their reverberating
lag then predictable macromania yet     we did 
find a home in that Cockpit Fog did we not?
though our luminosity caused a big reduction
in ratings.         you join me live from the stomach

     of a Trojan Horse parked outside Diseaseville’s
main wall     a single point of failure has now been
established &     rats snakes weasels centipedes worms
insects are all racing out of the City past me in droves.

—Submitted on 05/20/2020

Billy cancel is the author of Mock Trough Rasping Crow (BlazeVOX Books, 2018). A poet/performer and sound/collage artist, his work has appeared in Boston Review and PEN Poetry Series. Billy lives in Brooklyn with Thursday Fernworthy (Lauds); together they perform as the noise-poetry duo Tidal Channel. Online at billycancelpoetry.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.

Shantha J. Bunyan
Rough Spring

outside, tulips are pushing
out of ground you usually till

and buds are peeking out of branches
that you would typically prune

but you are not here to do that work,
not here to ask me to do it with you.

spring will arrive, all blossoming and bright
but inside my heart is still weeping.

on the outside i feel as dry and cold
as the box on the bookshelf containing your ashes.

the flowers friends sent wither within their vases,
drooping onto the counter as they die.

outside the flowers haven’t yet bloomed
while house-bound by the virus, we wither inside.

we cannot yet bury you, cannot honor you as you deserve:
no funeral, no service, no burial, no closure.

and so you stay on the shelf, gone but waiting,
feeling nothing at all.

spring will spring past without me;
and I, without you, can only try to weather through,
rough: stuck inside feeling everything but you.

—Submitted on 04/04/2020

Shantha J. Bunyan’s poems have appeared in Put Into Words, My Love (Pomme Journal, 2020). A scuba divemaster, she spent the past 6 years traveling the world and visiting over 35 countries. Her blog is called Random Pieces of Peace.

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.

Donna Farris
I Need a Beer Joint

I need a beer joint,
some place where no one gives a damn about Corona,
except the one served ice-cold with a wedge of lime.

Let me forget about face masks
and just get wasted with a friend,
as we spit in each other’s faces, talking bullshit.

I want to put some money in a jukebox
and dance so close our sweat mingles
as we twirl around on the wood floor.

It’s getting harder to watch the fear mongers
report the death toll while WFH in their underwear,
but we’re all in this together, right?

I love hearing about the deer,
antelope, mountain lions and coyotes
reclaiming their parks and jogging trails.

Who knew it would not be an act of Congress
but a microscopic germ to park our cars and trucks
giving Mother Earth a chance to breathe fresh air?

Shelter in place must be hard for the extrovert
even introverts, like me, are finding it very fucking suffocating.
that is why…I need a beer joint.

—Submitted on 05/20/2020

Donna Farris writes: I was having a particularly bad day at work—a library closed to the public. Stressed that I might be infecting my coworkers or them me. Feeling isolated, vulnerable and claustrophobic. My rebellious mind took over and I started writing this anthem. Farris lives and works in the Texas Panhandle.

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.

Megan Rilkoff
Change of Plans

A friend’s wedding was planned for the end of May.
A beautiful backyard wedding
At the end of spring.
Invitations were sent, flowers ordered.
Dress fitted, suit tailored.
They now hang in their bags in the closet.

They eloped yesterday
At a park in their neighborhood.
The officiant
The bride and groom
One friend each
And the strangers who stopped to watch,
who pointed and laughed and cried,
And took out their phones.
What was normal is now a miracle.

The newlyweds looked happy and sweet
As if it really was the best day of their lives.
Their guests, smiling and cheering,
Standing six feet apart.

Her sister, a nurse,
watched on Facebook Live,
From the sanitized hospital break room.
Mom and Dad tuned in from the couch at home,
To see their oldest daughter,
Married through the phone.

—Submitted on 04/04/2020

Megan Rilkoff is a middle school English teacher and emerging writer. After teaching in Laos and New York City, she now works in Central Pennsylvania, where she lives with her fiancé.

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.

Sally DeJesus
Nest Egg

A baker’s dozen doesn’t make this cake
stand up inside my oven mind
hot with fear overbaked
my tendency to beat myself
I can’t escape.

Today again I rise to reason
out the night sweats over broken eggs
grinding teeth
how much will we need to keep us safe?

I count blessings
I count money
nest egg folds into weighing out a sticky mix
where cookies crumble into milky ways
layered over spinning earth
another breath
I am saved
as I stir.

—Submitted on 05/20/2020

Sally DeJesus facilitates writing workshops in New York City homeless shelters and Crisis Respite Centers with grant support from Poets & Writers, Community Access, and Citizens for NYC through Poetry Speaks for Us. Her poems have appeared in River & South Review, Manhattan Linear, Metropolitan Review, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including POSTmortem (Mad Gleam Press, 2016).

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.

Mary K O’Melveny
A Fingertip Has One Hundred Nerve Endings

This fact might explain why I want to touch
every surface. Press hard against countertop,
doorframe, bed pillow Finger each avocado,
orange, purple onion. Fondle a pale
pink dogwood petal, trace each fine line to
its yellow center flower where hope resides.

Strangers and neighbors pass in hallways or
on sidewalks. I want to reach out, to hold
their hands, extend my arms. I believe they might
feel the same though we simply nod our heads.
I am one of the lucky ones. Each night,
my wife and I can explore each tender place.

—Submitted on 04/04/2020

Mary K O’Melveny is the author of A Woman of a Certain Age (2018) and Merging Star Hypotheses (2020), both on Finishing Line Press. With the other members of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group, she is a co-author of An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019). Her poetry has appeared in Slippery Elm Literary Journal, West Texas Review, Into the Void, Light, Voices of Eve, The Write Place at the Write Time, and other journals. O’Melveny is a retired labor rights lawyer who lives with her wife in Washington, DC and Woodstock, NY.

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.

Chad Parenteau
In other news…

Jane Roe Jesus Tanka

Jane Roe Jesus asks
is it even possible
for any woman
to enter either kingdom
without their thirty silver?

Cheese Cloth Mask Jesus Tanka

Cheese Cloth Mask Jesus
says it’s just a placebo.
No cloth mask out there
can stop a hammering nail,
so why wear any at all?

—Submitted on 05/21/2020

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, Molecule, and Résonance. He serves as associate editor of Oddball Magazine and hosts the venerable Stone Soup Poetry series in Boston. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

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.

Susan Stringfellow
Van Gogh

I’m separate from the world
and my hair is falling out.
My slippers are askance.
The Letters of Van Gogh in my hand.
His left eye in odd angles,
and so the socket. Other eye
smooth, like any human.
Face lined in random spots,
near-vertically, same stroking
as the strong, excitable brows.
The furrow between the brows,
the bump on the line of the nose.
Nothing easy for the man,
his body lit by electricity
but forced to sit, to wait,
for some sanity, some calm,
an effort, and this pandemic,
when we are all sitting,
doing a little work, watching a little
t.v., waiting
for something to approach.

—Submitted on 04/02/2020

Susan Stringfellow holds two MFAs in creative writing, one from Carlow University and another from Chatham University, both in Pittsburgh.

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.