Karen Tardiff
The Places I’ve Been

Dollar General, 4:17 pm:
The man on the next aisle talks
about flying in the day before, is
mad at the toilet paper hoarders
while his arms are full of Kleenex.
We hightail it to the checkout and
curse ourselves for forgetting litter.

Walmart, 5:01 pm:
Everyone nods politely, side-eyeing
each other’s carts to make sure
there aren’t more than 2 gallons
of water, not caring they have water
coming from the tap while others
have a contaminated well.

HEB, 6:44 pm:
It’s easy to see how the apocalypse
will end, with everyone munching
on balls of flour and egg, all the
produce still in boxes, the organic
aisle untouched, the heart-healthy
foods safe from hoarding, the
bread and Coke men almost as
popular as the Charmin man.

7-Eleven, 7:20 pm:
A bag of ice and a last ditch
effort for milk, the look of fear
and exhaustion on the faces
which are usually smiling
while ringing up Slushees
and hot roller items, not
knowing when the gas
truck is going to arrive.

—Submitted March 20, 2020

Karen Tardiff‘s is the author of the Kindle eBook of poems Stumbling to Breathe (2015, available on Amazon). Her work has appeared in The Dead Mule School, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Pif Magazine, Tuck Magazine, and other journals. In addition to poetry, Tardiff writes flash fiction, personal essays, and short stories. Born in Texas, Tardiff now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast. A tireless advocate for poetry in Aransas County, she founded the Aransas County Poetry Society, initiated the Poems on the Go project, and heads the Poetry on the Beach event (the first annual staging of which has now been derailed by the pandemic). She is founding publisher and editor-in-chief at Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

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.

Yvonne Amey
In Memoriam W.C. on the L Line into Downtown Sydney During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Into Circular Quay on the L Line with no particular
stop in mind.
Maybe I’ll ride all day & people watch.
Perhaps I’ll hop off at Sydney Medical Center.

Rush hour, over; my train empty of humans
& their nature.

Maybe it’s the way this train carries me in its palm
of silent smoothness.
I imagine I’m gliding
on crushed velvet.

I’ll call this stillness
a color:
Perhaps, deep verdant for blooming life.
Perhaps, a shade of underpants-white
which is what my uncle wears
to greet me at his hotel door.

Uncle’s legs are thin umbrellas.
His gate slopes 45 degrees.
He has one speed
sleepy, like his lungs;
How they refuse/ to communicate
with the rest of his body.
How he takes hours to choose
a souvenir puzzle for his wife.
How he falls asleep talking.

How we drink too much Australian
Moscato each evening, raise our hotel
mugs in toast:
to Sydney, our first-class flights,
his brother, my father.

How the puzzle box
in half-light
resembles a body.

Yvonne Amey holds an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Florida Review, 50 Gs, Vine Leaves Journal, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere.

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.

Stephen Gibson
For a Girl Who Died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

To get to Calvary from the Bronx, I’d take the el
to Manhattan, then the Queens line to the cemetery
where I cut grass in the oldest section every day

where there were photographs in headstones, ovals
like ostrich eggs with pictures, with this one pretty
girl I still remember, hands folded like Catholics pray,

in a white veil and dress—some family’s daughter—
Italian, I’m guessing (that section was all from Italy),
her hands tied together with a white rosary; anyway,

in high school, I remember thinking the 1918 influenza
pandemic that killed her seemed as ancient as Pompeii.

Stephen Gibson is the author of Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (University of Arkansas Press, 2017) winner of the Miller Williams Prize. His previous collections include The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016); Rorschach Art Too (Story Line Press, 2014), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards of the West Chester University Poetry Center; Paradise (University of Arkansas Press, 2011), a finalist for the Miller Williams prize; Frescoes (Lost Horse Press, 2011); Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House, 2008), selected and introduced by Andrew Hudgins; and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press, 2001). His poems have appeared in Agni, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, The Paris Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review, and other publications. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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.

Arien Reed
Wait

I’m clutching your hand because yesterday is still burning
through us and these tears mean you’re still alive
your every slow, torn apart wheeze a woman keening
a mile away, and I feel a mile away even as I cling
to this sack of twigs you keep for a hand, I hold on
because your hand is a rope and I’m climbing
out of the hell you have no choice but to die in, yes
you’re in hell and you’re dying, because hell is not
a place we go to after death—it is what we leave life
in the hope of escaping
and I want to tell you how I appreciate your
breathing, that I know too well the sacrifice you’re
making every moment that you remain here with me,
but what I don’t want to tell you
is I, too, know the strength it takes to live, how
to remain alive within the bright glow of hell
is to look the devil in the eyes
every day
and say

NO

Arien Reed holds an MFA in creative writing from National University in La Jolla. He lives with his husband and works at Fresno City College, where he co-founded the LGBTQ Allied Staff and Faculty Association, of which he currently serves as president. His poetry and art has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the TulipTree Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Beyond Words, the Infinity Room, the GNU journal, and others.

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.

Ariana Moulton
Trace the Curve

What if someone told you
You couldn’t go where you normally go?
Would the you in you come undone?
Not seeing what you expect to see.

You’re not alone in your quarantine,
Except you are. Globally masked,
Tightly tonight.

Would you even know if someone had
Rearranged your desk at work, moved
Your ruler aside, borrowed your protractor
and traced the curve we aim to flatten?

It’s these flat lands where the wind sweeps
For miles, I see in my sleep, particles like dust.
Keeping us awake, watchmen
Who watch for an invisible enemy.

If you’ve never been told no
Then how would you know? You wouldn’t
Go back there, to that place you’re supposed to be.
You would have grabbed more of your belongings, that ruler.

How could you measure freedoms of the past
You’ve never lost? Until this moment, when
A mayor quotes a poet, Ms. Brooks herself,
Calling upon us to cultivate dreams in the dark.

It’s bigger than us, microscopically
And it wants to crumble you down,
To sicken you, your words break us all free
To a place where gold will attach itself
As we breathe tonight, freely.

Ariana Moulton is a teacher, a mother, and a runner, in addition to being a poet. She has taught third grade in the Chicago public schools for 15 years, and has been writing poems for much longer than that.

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.

Frank Dullaghan
Holding On

You were only killing time and it’ll kill you right back
—Meat Loaf

If there’s much point in holding on
it’s in the hope that times will brighten.
It’s more desire then expectation.

When hope is scraped down to the bone,
when every promise has been broken,
what point is there in holding on?

Yet that longing to believe’s not gone
despite the facts, despite the notion
that it’s more desire than expectation.

So, I choose instead to live like one
who will survive these days, that darken
what hope I have in holding on.

I understand there’ll be no fortune
to ease my senior years, I’ll blossom
some other way—no expectation,

except to kill the time I’m given.
Too many who are ill will worsen;
too many good will lose their holding.

Yet soon enough it will be done:
this waiting, this sacrificial token.
This is the art of holding on.
It’s more desire than expectation.

Frank Dullaghan is an Irish writer living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is the author of four poetry collections, including Lifting the Latch (Cinnamon Press, 2018). His poems have appeared in Cyphers, London Magazine, Nimrod, Poetry Review, and Rattle, among other journals.

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.

Amber Anderson
News Live in Reel Time / Shelter in Place

I can’t stop reading the news I’ve been
obsessively refreshing the page for updates I
watch the death count climb like
waiting for the ball to drop on new years eve and
it feels fucking morbid.

Big Brother is towering and
whoever his shadow lands on
has to cower in place.

It’s like a game of red-light/green-light
that no one can stop playing—but in this
version if you don’t follow the rules you
die instead of just being out.

Amber Anderson is a single mother returning to college in her thirties. Her poetry has appeared in Pacific Wave.

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.

Jen Schneider
Haiku on Human Spirit, Resilience, and Creativity

Early bird specials
exchanged for senior-only
shopping times. Germ free.

Ultra-lux dining
replaced with white gloves
and curbside pick-up.

When Spring curtains close
on high school production crews
radio shows sing.

As supplies dwindle
and toilet paper runs low
barter days emerge.

A three-ply four pack
trades at a steep premium.
Basic needs come first.

City streets empty
as urban dwellers retreat to
high-rise balconies.

Spirit shops shutter
as governments scramble
to catch loose droplets.

Courtesy handshakes
cease as fingers curl and push
thermometer tabs.

Ethical debates…
Five packs of ramen remain.
Purchase one only.

Activists converge.
Go Green converts to Go Home. Now.
United we stand.

Get Out the Vote pleas
shift to cyberspace convos.
Door knobs turn deadly.

Chilling statistics
yield emergency measures
with long term impact.

Jen Schneider’s work has appeared in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, The New Verse News, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals. An educator, attorney, and writer, Schneider lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia.

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.