RogueAgent

ISSUE 41
CONTENTS

AUGUST 2018


Caitlin Wilson
Agnieszka Krajewska
Bryanna Licciardi
Sean Mahoney
Andrew Kozma
INTERVIEW: Caseyrenée Lopez
Anwar Gheni Jaber
James Grinwis
Jessica Morey-Collins
Genevieve DeGuzman
Jenny Grassl

CONTRIBUTORS

Caitlin Wilson

THERE'S NO OTHER WORD FOR PURPLE

The root is warped but

you ask me if it’s polish.
I put the seeds in, see? I’m

cultivating, collecting the dirt purple
beneath the white corona

of the nail bed. A bed
of nails, primeval ease,

a bed to lay my hunger in.
This left-hand callous

is from weeding out
independence under the white oak,

this one from a slug of juniper gin
and a bang of conversation.

You slam the plate,

knowing I’ll eat the echo, its fat
grapes rolling over the table and into my hand.

Agnieszka Krajewska

ENDING APRIL IN WILLIAMSBURG, 1999

We walked in step through foggy Williamsburg,
the river and Manhattan on one hand, and on the other, abandoned
warehouses and factories with grids of small dusty windows,
some cracked, some with glimpses of gears of forgotten machines.

His spiky belt snagged and tore
the lace of my little black dress
as we walked from the subway
to the warehouse with Roman columns.

I was gliding on a thin membrane
of syrup meant to grow rock candy
but molding instead;
sticky dread underneath the late-April heat,
the beginning of an early-summer smell,
too-sunny days tight and stretched with sleeplessness.

Everything was opening and singing, except for me. 
There was no opening and springing forth in me,
only warmth swelling into the heat of fever.
Strep throat bloomed yellow and green,
tearing fleshy membranes into lace.

Bryanna Licciardi

ASSIGNED BUDDIES

The teacher says it’s a good thing. My twang is a target,
so at first I agree. Even after they push lunch trays for me
to take away, and order I not speak without permission,
call me a redneck that time I cried y’all after them at recess.

It’s too cold here. My parents have to take me to buy clothes
I’d never heard of—snow pants and thermal underwear.
It’s too cold here to feel like myself. Not until the sun comes
do I realize how much I’ve missed my clothes—thin, simple layers.

My overalls. I love how they never slip down my scrawny hips,
so today I strut the hallways. Kids pass by pointing and belly laughing.
On the bus home, my buddies say it’s because only hicks wear overalls.
I’m an embarrassment, they say. I’d like to say I made them lick dirt,

but it’s third grade, and I’m still unravelling the truth that belonging
means offering up pieces of yourself like sacrifice. I’m the new girl
who talks funny, who doesn’t know cursive or the times table,
who needs the teacher’s help to put on her snow pants. At home,

I rip the overalls off like fire, throw them in the trashcan. It doesn’t
seem like enough distance between us, so I pour a can of Pearly Pink paint,
leftovers from my new room, and watch it gloss the overalls like a frosting.
I wait for relief, or regret—whichever will come first.

Sean Mahoney

1.14.18

For this I am going to swipe, that is attempt
Finagling the vocal cadence of one Nancy Mairs
As I tell you about last evening in the dog
Park with our pups. I had the three of them
With me as is often the case. We were maybe
A quarter of the way into our stay when from
Some chamber within a valve failed. And
The urge was upon me. And what happens
Happens. God had nothing to do with it.
I cannot say for sure that the MS had
Anything to do with it either. Perhaps it
Was just me not being prepared prior
To leaving home. We ran out, me and the
Pups. They get excited when they see me
With the keys and leading them out the door.
They know and their excitement is contagious.
So we’re lolling around the park, the smallest
Stays near me if there are many pups
Shooting and darting around. The other two
Play. I begin looking for anyplace around
That might afford a moment of discretion.
Tis not to be; not here, not now. I talk
To myself silently: suck it up buttercup.
We’re almost done here. And that works
For awhile. Until the dogs are re-leashed
And we are out the gate headed back toward
The Subaru. I sense a few small releases.
I know there are no clothes in the car but
I have the plastic mitts provided by the park.
The dogs are loaded and I get in, fish a bag
Out of my pockets and cram it down between
My legs and under my crotch. Is this MS?
There really is no way to know for sure.
How can I make claims of a disease whose
Entire predilection rests upon the unpredictable
And erratic timing. All have had that moment
Of near bursting. Everyone has leaked. A little.
A lot. Be it the truth. Be it the pee. Be it
Brain function. The whistle is internal. Spot
On the front of my shorts upon returning
Home was not: bottom of a coffee mug shape.
Khaki shorts. Should have worn the Uniqlo
Briefs – thicker cotton. How can we ever
Appreciate that what happens, happens.
Today the leaks? Tomorrow Montecito.

Andrew Kozma

SONG OF THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

The moon’s dark side faces us. Somewhere above the clouds
an entire universe sits in shadow.

I have drunk all the wine in the house. The whiskey, too.
My thoughts are rotten meat.

The breeze carries no whispers. My ears are silence clogged.
When I speak, I echo my own echo.

Caseyrenée Lopez talks about embodied poetry
and writing the new gods

Please describe your journey toward writing poetry that reflects on the experience of living in the body. Have you always written this way, or did you come to it over time?

I’ve definitely fallen into writing that relates to the body, both mentally and physically. It looks me years to become comfortable enough to write about intimate details of my life. During college I primarily wrote fiction, and didn’t have a clue what poetry really was, or what it could do. With that, I suppose my journey to poetry was paved with middle-aged white men telling me what I should and shouldn’t be writing about, defining my experience and telling me what’s important—coming to poetry has been an awakening of my creativity, my understanding of what writing is and can be, and that is largely thanks to the women, nonbinary people, and trans people that have helped light my path.

To write about the body, more specifically, my body, is something I never truly explored until my late twenties, within the last three or four years. Before coming out as nonbinary, I was trapped in this awkward, cramped space between what I perceived as womanhood and attempted to be a person without labels, but it was stifling. Attempting to navigate my life without adequate vocabulary was tiresome and draining and trying to understand what I am always left me confused or alienated. But then I started writing about the idea that occupying a body perceived as woman means you are constantly at war. This idea guides my writing, allowing me the freedom to explore new parts of myself unapologetically.

Living nonbinary in a polarized world is so challenging for the speaker in the new gods that they literally tear themself apart (“amalgamation”) and negate their own subjectivity (“femme gaze”). Yet there is also an aspect of this speaker who is a warrior (“elegy to my former self”) and a nurturer (“i can be a demon for you” “i hold myself”). Do you think a person has to overcome their destructive aspect before they can fight for survival and nurture another, or can these things happen simultaneously / in a non-linear way?

I think that these things happen simultaneously all the time. There’s no guidebook on how to be a person, you just figure it out along the way. People contain multitudes and we’re typically never given the opportunity to see one another as our whole selves. There is always something blocking the path, some social pressure, some phony professional self, or whatever else, that prevents a person’s authenticity from being complete. For me, it’s about putting my intent out into the world, I don’t mean like in a metaphysical way, but in real, concrete means. I like to place a lot of my emotions and nurturing tendencies in cooking for my loved ones. That’s what I mean when I say putting my intent into the world—put another way, it would be learning to allow your love languages to speak, no matter where you are or who you’re with. When this happens, you are breaking yourself down, positively, and building others up.

elegy to my former self

bones broken open,
              ripe marrow spread
like butter over firm muscle

i pluck chicken feathers,
repeat three times

blood salt sage and cedar

swirl a large tail feather in
              metallic liquid

              paint my face
with iron tainted poison
              shine like the bright
side of the moon

it makes sense to me

you turn your nose up
at my old hard to kill habits

Besides the vulnerability present in the content of this book, I am impressed by [what I perceive as] the vulnerability of form. Writing short poems, to me, has always felt like a major risk. You don’t have a lot of space to justify, explain, convince, or build a moment for your reader. There are some poems in the new gods that just blew me away—for example “carnivore,” “a secret,” “outside on a windy afternoon,” “october”— because they were intensely personal yet had such brevity!  To what extent is it a different mental / psychological process for you to write an extremely minimal poem vs. a longer one with much more room to maneuver?

I work best in short bursts, and so brevity has always been important to my writing, regardless of form. Most of my poems begin as fragments, single phrases, or vague ideas, and are built from there, but some pieces remain as fragments when I believe the image speaks for itself. Keeping the language tight helps me write these pieces, but when it comes to longer poems, I sometimes use an essay outline to help keep my thoughts organized.

october

rubbing coarse sea salt in my eyes
is no different than thinking of you

Please share with our readers a list of 5-10 books you think we should read right now.

Al Youm by George Abraham

Syzygy, Beauty by T. Fleischmann

What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz

Coming Out Like a Porn Star ed., by Jiz Lee

war/lock by Lisa Marie Basile

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

There is a Case That I Am by torrin a. greathouse

RAM by ari k. castañeda

Some Rogue Agent fans are just beginning to explore what making art about the body would look like for them. What advice would you give to someone just starting down the path toward writing poetry that features the body?

Writing is a vulnerable experience, but it’s further complicated when you are incorporating truly intimate details of the self. Writing about the body means you are constantly dissecting yourself, continually mining for material, and that can become exhausting. To avoid exhaustion, read, outside of poetry, on themes that are related to your poetry. If at all possible, read any prose by your favorite poets. I’ve found this helps me maintain a strong connection to my writing, while also allowing me to see these themes worked out in other forms. It’s also helpful to engage with the work in different ways. An interesting thing I like to do is write a poem in 3 different forms and compare them side-by-side, or cut about 10 printed poems into fragments and reassemble them as a single collage, cento, or another similar found form. Essentially, try to infuse the work with creativity. Sometimes writing the body can be bleak, especially if you are chronically or terminally ill, and finding new ways of engaging with messy ideas allows us to continually introduce new energy into our writing.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Caseyrenée Lopez gazes at the viewer from the passenger seat of a car. This author has shoulder-length blond hair, dark brown eyes, large black-framed glasses, and two silver nose rings. They wear a seat belt and a blue scoop-necked shirt with a pattern of white skulls and birds. A factory or industrial building is barely visible through the rear window of the car.

Anwar Gheni Jaber

LOSTS

A Lost Soul

The windows are important because my father had said that winds are always kissing
the glasses of the windows in the early morning. I can see the souls of the winds, but
the problem is situating in my fingers where all the stories of absence reside in. In fact
I am trying to color my soul with a windy gaze but as you see nothing here; in my
depths, but the loss.

The Lost Saddle

My family might have possessed a saddle; I don't know and I didn't ask about this, but
I think if we had one, it will be uncompassionate like our desert. You know; I am an
Arabian man and there is nothing here but deserted souls, so I decided to immerse in
my grandfather’s well and stray in his old field looking for our lost mare.   

A Lost Love

My years are so affectionate because all these trees which we had seen in a special
moment are absent. I like the absent moment and I love the absent fragrance of my
grandfather. The colors are the remnant of a love story, and my eye is an old lover.
Now sit please, don’t worry; I am ok; I am not crazy; I just try to live without my lost
love. 

James Grinwis

SELF IN WHICH A TRUCKLOAD OF TOXINS SPILLS

Driving to the city listening to the quartet.

I have my dog and honey barbecue chips,
coffee in a handsome paper cup.

Setting small fires throughout the town, the angry children.

On my street glaciologists come and go. Numbers everywhere,
map digits. Egyptologists. Half of life gone, undone.

The doomster in his bee-coated buggy speaks: it is time.

Blue cloud on stork hill. Petite wife rubbing oil into her belly.

Durable power of attorney? No, a very unendurable power of attorney
of sticks lit and fizzing eons.

Massive silence?

Or will something happen to my stuff.

To cast off everything or not to cast.

Jessica Morey-Collins

TO MY EMOTIONS,

After scaling the grid with shrill jolts, you pizza-folded the panorama
and shoved it in whole. That postprandial nap snapped time itself. I
have tried, repeatedly, to reason with you. But here we are, dangling
over forever. You’ve leapt at less. Ceded to breeze-shifts. Listen—
there’s reason to believe in warmth. A case for staying alive. This
tongue will bloom again against a melon’s flesh in summer; bells will
toll both buttered rolls and burnt ones. Nobody understands love
but look at them acting like they’ll raft you with it—their lungs
pump it (love, love, love) and flimsily, it lofts you over your own
slosh and yip. All the while love’s effervescent threat of dissolution
fizzes. The yips rip flesh mere inches under. Your earth crisps and
purges magma, and at that behest I grit my bones. After balking me
from what I know—laughter happens and will happen again and
jasmine clings to starlight—you throw, and throw, and throw.

Genevieve DeGuzman

NIGHT TERRORS

If the beats of butterfly wings cause hurricanes
what would the echoes
of snores do?

I sleep on one side of the bed
closest to the wall.

The person who sleeps closest to the door
must defend against zombies
and stave off fanged dreams.

Easy fruit, being alone in bed. I reach up
and feel for the heavy-bodied crop,

those bunched-up grape ghostlings
limp
on the vine.

Look how the light makes itself threadbare
behind the finger fronds of my hand.

Look at these palms stained ink black.
Hamsa on my cheek, hellion breath.
I’ve thought about what would happen

when you left. I promised
to remember our flush days, the days we

steeped in pools of wild flamingoes.
But fiercer beasts are coming up the stairs now.
If you were here, we might have

faced them together, shared in their
impossibility.

I swap sides, exposing a parallel length of me,
settling in the imprint my body willed
like insomnia knit in the thread count.

Sleep gentle and easy. Love’s
tucked away in the asymptotes of

retracted claws. Hint of clatter on the floorboards.
It brings me closer and closer to the daybreak
I can reach for and reach for always.

Jenny Grassl

THE SWEET COAX OF BITTER ALMOND

It is not easy to give birth
without a womb—    

world yolk, rib break, clone.
A father’s couvade.

I could throw a peach pit wet
and furred onto lawn, make a Georgia.

I am never careless like that.
Sometimes, I was         deliberate—

sticking toothpick into avocado
until its heart broke into flame.

Twice I spun children
out of romance and fork-tender.

I’ve seen apple pips and hair combs
sprout a town, then their factories ghost

weed-alive of the dead. Sweat
still tastes like brick and copper penny.

Tell me shivery countries found or founder
in the foam of men.       Upon a tiny time

of flagella. I’ll swear it is not random.      
Nor is the cull of the great once of wars.

Issue 41 Contributors

Genevieve DeGuzman is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her recent work appears in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, FOLIO, The Puritan, Reed Magazine, Five:2:One, and Stonecoast Review. She is a finalist for the 2018 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2017 Lauren K. Alleyne Difficult Fruit Poetry Prize, and a winner of the 2017 Oregon Poetry Association’s New Poets Contest. When she's not writing, she's working on perfecting her hygge. Find out more at: https://about.me/genevievedeguzman 

Jenny Grassl was raised in Collegeville, Pennsylvania and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her M.F.A. in poetry from Bennington Writing Seminars, and her B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Ocean State Review, Radar Poetry, Clarion, LIT, Pierogi, and Critiphoria.

James Grinwis' poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, and a number of other journals. He is the author of The City From Nome and Exhibit of Forking Paths, which was a National Poetry Series Selection and published by Coffee House.  

Anwar Gheni Jaber is an Iraqi poet, writer and artist. He was born in 1973 in Babylon. His name has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies and he has won many prizes; one of them is the "World Laureate-Best Poet in 2017 from WNWU". Tessellated (poems in one poem) narrative lyric writing and digital expressionistic art are his peculiar styles. Anwar is the author of "Narratopoet"; (2017), "Tessellation"; (2018) and other 60 books.  

Andrew Kozma's poems have appeared in Blackbird, Strange Horizons, Redactions, and Best American Poetry 2015. His book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award.

Agnieszka Krajewska is a poet, essayist, and combat epistemologist. She received an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2004, and was ordained as an Adept in the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn in 2009. Her poems have appeared in two chapbooks, Water Breaking (Ye Olde Fonte Shoppe, 1997) and Residual Heat (Self-published, 2014). She lives in San Francisco, California.

Bryanna Licciardi has received her MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Her debut chapbook SKIN SPLITTING is out now from Finishing Line Press (August, 2017). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and co-curates a local poetry reading series called Poetry in the Boro, founded by the Murfreesboro Poet Laureate. Her work appears in journals such as Poetry Quarterly, BlazeVOX, Northern England Review, Peacock Journal,  Adirondack Review, and Cleaver Magazine. Check out www.bryannalicciardi.com for more.

Originally from Georgia, Caseyrenée Lopez relocated with their family to Virginia in the summer of 2017. They work as a professor of English at John Tyler Community College, and are the author of two full-length poetry collections, the new gods (Bottlecap Press, March 2018) and i was born dead (About Editions, forthcoming), as well as a chapbook heretic bastard (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, forthcoming). In addition to teaching and writing, Caseyrenée is also the editor of Crab Fat Magazine and publisher at Damaged Goods Press. They tweet @caseyreneelopez.

Sean Mahoney lives with Dianne, her mother, two Uglydolls, and three dogs in Santa Ana, California. He works in geophysics. He believes in salsa, dark chocolate, and CBD. Sean helped create to the Disability Literature Consortium (www.dislitconsortium.wordpress.com) and co-edited the first 3 volumes of the MS benefit anthology Something On Our Minds.

Jessica Morey-Collins received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she won an Academy of American Poets award, and worked as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. She studies hazard mitigation in the University of Oregon's Masters of Community and Regional Planning program. Find her at www.jessicamoreycollins.com

Caitlin Wilson s a recent graduate from the University of Maryland, where she was a member of the Jiménez-Porter Writers' House and Editor-in-Chief for Stylus Literary Journal. She is the recipient of a 2018 Jiménez-Porter Literary Prize in Poetry and her work has been published in Entropy. She will be pursuing an MFA in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University in Fall 2018.