What Rough Beast | Poem for March 6, 2017

Liz Ahl
Fake Ghazal

The narcissistic man-child points and blusters “fake news!”
during his most recent spew and blather to make news.

Just when I think my despair has touched its limit,
the creature’s maw unhinges, finds more of me to take. News

to no one: his voice chews at the frayed ends of my hope.
To no one with an ounce of heart or sense is this ache news.

The relentless pixels of his thin-skinned cruelty might break me,
break you, break the world, even, finally, break “news.”

I know I’m meant to find some inch of ground where vigilance
and sanity can coexist. Or maybe I should forsake news.

 

Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds, forthcoming in 2017 from Hobblebush Books. She has written four chapbooks: Home Economics and Talking About the Weather, both from Seven Kitchens Press in 2012 (the latter as part of the “Summer Kitchen” series); Luck (Pecan Grove, 2010), which received the New Hampshire Literary Awards “Reader’s Choice” in Poetry Award in 2011; and  A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, winner of the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration, Atlanta Review, Able Muse, Measure, Cutthroat, and Rappahannock Review.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you want to support the mission and work of Indolent Books, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.