RogueAgent

ISSUE 43
CONTENTS

OCTOBER 2018


Jackie Craven
Lori Lamothe
Grace O’Connor
Eileen Murphy
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
Anurak Saelaow
Betsy Housten
Rita Mookerjee
Kimberly Gomes
alyssa hanna

CONTRIBUTORS

Jackie Craven

UNDER ANESTHESIA, I REMEMBER A WATERMELON WITH SLIPPERY SEEDS

We sit on our mother’s stoop and spit seeds
            into the tall grass.

We spit them across the lawn
            all the way to the garden shed.

My sister says
            This is how we grew.

Pulp clings to our fingers.
            Bumblebees tangle our hair.

My lips form a whistle
            and seeds pelt the fevered sky.

All the way from tomorrow a surgeon says
            God what a mess.

His voice rumbles in the shed
            and a lawnmower lets out a roar.

Crickets shriek up from the chickweed—
            Petals swirl through linoleum halls.

Quick, my sister says, do this—
            and spits seeds into the safety of her palm.

We hide them in our fists. One by one
            we polish them.

Lori Lamothe

POST CHEMO

Yesterday I dyed my hair.
Now I’m painting my toes.
I run my fingertips through the flames 
until the mirror catches fire.
I stare at my feet
and watch poppies
bloom across the linoleum.  

Once on the way home from an event 
I don’t really remember,
the road rose and went on rising.
It twisted and turned
until the ride
whirled us too dizzy to think.
Then the trees fell away and there was only
night and distance.

Sometimes it’s easy to disappear.
Sometimes the beginning of disaster curves
out of nowhere.
When life flattens out again  
you sip coffee and fight over music,
your almost death
dissolving behind you.

Grace O’Connor

MOTHER AS REDECORATOR

My mother calls it an accent wall,
which is to say it does not match
the other three.  She buys green paint
because green’s my favorite color.
My artwork papers the adjacent wall
like another skin—I’ve grown old
enough for her to unlayer my bedroom.
She peels back paper, unsticks daughter-
hair from rolled bits of tape, sloughs
portraits from their places.  She loses
her nails from the effort, manicured
scabs I find littering the carpet.
The wall’s back: bare and exposed bone,
vultured clean.  After she’s through,
she lovingly paints the wall adjacent to
the one unskinned.  Then she leaves
home.  As I navigate the new furniture,
packing the room’s carcass into boxes,
I try to make sense of my mom.  I can’t
see myself fully in her mirror, the one
she hung to reflect the accent she left.
Mama, I want to understand this.
Seeing myself barely shoulders-up,
I look into the mirror’s vacancy—my neck

beheaded against a green backdrop.

Eileen Murphy

MESSAGE FROM MY HEADACHE

I once had a soft touch;
            my fingers were spiders
pinching you hard enough, often enough,
            to remind you of my existence.
But now that I've decided to crush you down,
            my siege against you
has robbed me of every ounce of patience,
            that, and running away
from the gang of neurotic children
            who rules your brain
and chases me down alleys.

 I follow you, dearie,
            I probe. 
I spy through a crack
            in your closed window.
Then I slither
            inside you
Yesterday, I ripped part of you open
            with my paws
like a head of lettuce.

I am proud to be your evil twin,
            fixed in your brain since birth.
You know my smell,
            my danse macabre.
How do you like
            my latest persona?
A hammer heavy as your father's fist.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

INVISIBLE TAN

Why do my neighbors,
my friends, misunderstand
me, Speaking mi lengua,
am I hombre or man?
Hablo con mi boca
not with my skin,
just because I am a different
shade, caminado in shadows
accenting borders, come
from the land, mi voz
from la tierra, hablo
con sueños demostrar
la pasión mi lengua, listen
to mi Corazon, beating
ritmos, sonrisas
but my Resistencia
resigns you, slighting
me, presume I exist
only as a gardener,
a niño immigrante
stranger call me stealer
dreamer, child anchoring
alien illegal to your border,
separates me, your wall
another brick will erode
you, keeping your mind
blaming mi cuerpo, crumble
fall from the rumbling
of mi mente, hear me singing,
calle marching unidos
con mis hermanas, hermanos,
familias, inciting canciones feel
me soy hombre, I am man! —
my voice, mi fuerza,
hear my desire, oye
don’t dare me to paint
me, rolling eyes over
my invisible tan— 
when you are the ones
disappearing, whitewash
with emotions, reflecting
all that you hear, remember
recuerdo, soy hombre…
always, I siempre will—
withstand.

Gracias Gloria E. Anzaldúa y Alejandra Sanchez

Anurak Saelaow

RECUSATIO

Doubled up or doubled over,
the body’s double doubles back

into the throng like a hook
down a throat. I see him

and I let him go, his hiss
already a mystery. He wants

leave to wing it, a sad jig
to fit his words into.

Hand the man a space,
a cloud’s ambit, cliffs

steep enough to barrel down.
Give him time to range  

along this host of trees with
all his drang and drizzle.

What a waste to breathe and be
amidst that saturnine pratter.

It’s true — we came to blows
once. I was thinking but

my fists were taut, hands
already at his throat.

Betsy Housten

BIKINI INCISION

The first thing I understand about my body is it's wrong.
My bladder's jacked, urine in retrograde, flowing back
toward my kidneys. I'm five. I get turned around easily too,
panic in restrooms and parks: fear of being left behind,

for no reason anyone can tell. Born jaundiced, yellow skin
like raw chicken at the Laneco. Mom runs ice baths
to calm the hallucinations I can't remember. What I know
is the surgeon lets me gurney into the operating room

with my Cabbage Patch Kid – impossibly blonde, never
not smiling – lets me think she's there the whole time,
watching as he carves the skin below my belly to rearrange
the deepest parts of me. In a few years the scar will fade

to just a subtle inch or two. Barely noticeable in a bikini!
This the doctor tells me several times afterward, winking
over his desk at my young toxic self. That's the day
it begins for me: girl as weapon, glistening, sharpened.

Rita Mookerjee

DRUNKEN BHAJAN

Did my mother tell you about the times she
found wine bottles in my laundry basket
how she laid them out with a note and how it’s been
years since I needed to sneak booze but I still cover my tracks with her.
No one should see me get in touch with empathy.

I’d be into harder stuff but the panhandle is hardly a place to score
good blow. I haven’t been scoring much. I’m double-fisting
and wishing for some extra sets of chalky blue arms.
I play songs from my childhood but they’ve changed
no longer bhajans but a sets of instructions that I read
and ignore. I’ll always drink and keep a bad temper
so once everyone accepts that then maybe we can have a
conversation in place of my mother’s didactic loop:
be nice be kind be honest which reminds me so much
of last place; my mouth floods with rage. As far as honest
goes, I can’t win because I’m ruthless shameless and shooting
to maim because the jugular only
tastes good when you’ve earned it.

A talking head lets me know
that none of this is productive but I think
of my enemies and of Kali in the bhajan
of her gold necklace strung with severed heads
and I resolve to never explain myself.

Kimberly Gomes

RIGHT NUMBER

Saints disagreed with her as she counted all of the men she tacked on her
hips, not needing a belt to hold herself up, to hold herself separate from
her loves and her lusts. She counted to ten and the saints said,
‘Keep counting,’ so she let the remaining numbers float up into the fog and find
home in the clouds where echoes of her hips could make rain. 

alyssa hanna

AT LEAST IT WASN’T

i am grateful for my portion.
the lights flicker like uncertainty,
the plates’ clatter is a music.
it’s a shame, she told me, but that’s
just the way the world works.
it’s closing time, kitchen getting rowdy,
hands on someone else’s knees, unsure
of what happens next.

sirens happen next, passing and shining
seizures through the street.
did you hear about that girl?
a body presses against me when the voice hits
my ear. she was
raped in a ditch on her way home from a shift at Starbucks.
i meet his eyes and i know this body.
i do not want to know this body.
you really gotta be careful of strangers.
let me walk you home tonight. you
trust me, right? 

she told me that at least
it wasn’t in a ditch. that
i didn’t really get hurt, no
bruises, black eyes, just
the haziness left behind, hardly even
that vague soreness she had when it happened to her
last. i am

grateful for my portion.

Issue 43 Contributors

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of the poetry collection Flashbacks & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press and the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press. Adrian is an LA Poet who has a BA from the University of Texas San Antonio and an MFA degree from Antioch University in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and their cat Woody Gold. Connect with Adrian at: http://www.adrianernestocepeda.com/

Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, Fall 2018). Her chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), won the publisher's Fabulist Fiction Award. Recent poems appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Spillway, Women's Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. Visit her at JackieCraven.com.

Kimberly Gomes is a MFA candidate in fiction at San Francisco State University. "Right Number" can be found in her chapbook, Love Notes to the Body, which is available for publication. She's currently working on a women-centered adventure novel and a lyrical essay collection. Her work has been featured in sparkle + blink, PEN Center USA's Only Light Can Do That, Sunset Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle. To read more, visit kimberly-gomes.com.

alyssa hanna graduated from Purchase College in May 2016 with a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in History. She was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize and was a finalist the 2017 James Wright Poetry Competition. alyssa is an aquarium technician and lives in Westchester with her fish and lizards.

Betsy Housten s is a Pushcart-nominated queer writer and massage therapist. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Lonesome October, Ghost City Press, Cold Creek Review, Terse Journal, Cotton Xenomorph, Vagabond City, Bone & Ink Press and elsewhere. She lives in New Orleans, where she is pursuing her MFA in poetry.

Lori Lamothe third poetry book is Kirlian Effect (FutureCycle, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Cider Press Review, Hayden's Ferry, The Journal, Menacing Hedge, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

Rita Mookerjee’s poetry is featured or forthcoming in Berfrois, Lavender Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Occulum, and others. Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. She is a PhD candidate at Florida State University specializing in contemporary Caribbean literature. 

A former Chicagolander, Eileen Murphy lives 30 miles from Tampa with her husband and three dogs. She received her Masters degree from Columbia College, Chicago. She teaches literature and English at Polk State College and has recently published poetry in Tinderbox (nominated for Pushcart Prize),Thirteen Myna Birds, Rogue Agent, and a number of other journals. She is a staff writer for Cultural Weekly magazine. Her website is mishmurphy.com.

Grace O’Connor grew alongside pine trees in the Catskills, New York.  Currently, she is a Rhetoric, Composition, & Teaching of English PhD student at the University of Arizona. She has work recently published in the Adirondack Review and forthcoming with Always Crashing.

Anurak Saelaow is a New York-based poet and writer. His work has previously been published in the Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, and Ceriph Magazine, amongst others. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System Press, 2015), and holds a BA in creative writing and English from Columbia University.