RogueAgent

ISSUE 50
CONTENTS

MAY 2019


Kristin Eade
Jerrice J. Baptiste
Jasper Kennedy
Heikki Huotari
Estrella del Valle
& Toshiya Kamei
Amorak Huey
Darren Demaree
Cheryl Dumesnil
Brynn Martin
Angelique Zobitz

CONTRIBUTORS

Kristin Eade

WANTING KIDS

In the house of my body
a whole room is unlit.
No light switch, no electrical,
not even a window
for letting the moon’s soft blush
trespass. Sometimes I go in
to see if anything’s there.
Only dust-sugared cobwebs
brushing my blind hands. Only
a chill as I move
into blackness.
Only my breath
in vacuum-sealed silence.
Don’t these things come with cribs,
I think. My foot doesn’t kick a thing.

I imagine lighting the room
with “I have baby fever”—
a wood stove’s glutted glow.
“I want four”—the romp of a flame
atop a fresh candle.
“My clock is ticking”—
a pyre.

As I try out each light source,
imagining the neatly painted walls
and glossy hard wood floors
and stately crown molding that’s
probably there, I realize:
these are the lit rooms
of other women.
“Why not?” is a question
people try to light my room with, incomprehension
the flashlight’s beam.
But you can get used to darkness
the same way you get used to light.

Jerrice J. Baptiste

UNDER BELLY

All of winter is frozen wild
ocean on my side. My hands
can’t hold it, so I sneak it into
a poem, feel its blue motion
on thighs, the silk of weeds
under feet, layers of skin even
eyelashes vibrate.

In bed, a sea foam blanket
keeps warm my isolated    
toes.  They danced three
weeks ago, before the word
amputate swirled from my
doctor's mouth who has never
twirled in an ocean.

Jasper Kennedy

THE TRIGEMINAL NERVE

The part of you that lets you cry, one of
them at least, is a branch from the same
three-headed twin sprouting from your
brainstem like a god’s child that
lets you feel the drag of a
fingertip on your cheekbone, 
lets you hold a sunflower seed between
two molars and crack it open,
lets a pigeon align with the planetary
magnetism and find its way home, 

and after its mortar-pestle crushing
by a mass on just the one side,
what’s left is a wet right sleeve,
tail-light red branching through one sclera,
a tingle and a stiffness on the left
half of your face as tears roll down the other, 
a bird flying around in circles, trying to get back
to where it was before.

Heikki Huotari

TO OXIDIZE

It takes one clean cut to oxidize, to free the evil of
its occupation and that should be ample synchrony for you.
If eating Jesus doesn't satisfy you, there may be a potluck,
not to mention ping pong, in the basement later. Both
temporally and spatially adjacent twins of injuries are felt
as one. Because of natural light's equivocal trajectory, I've
opted ignorantly and anonymously and have squandered all
my life-is-fair cards. Maybe you could sell me one of yours.

Estrella del Valle
trans. by Toshiya Kamei

1971

Things haven't changed.
I work and look at the sky almost every day.
Like I said, nothing happens here.
Everything is quiet.
This is a country of the strangest things.
Nothing is happening, but fear,
anxiety, the nocturnal heart, and enemies,
a hole in the stomach,
almost dead legs.
Things haven't changed.
The song festival, the lottery,
the poor lady who inherits a fortune,
they are transmitted free for your amusement,
like yesterday, like now, all day long.
Nothing has changed, nothing.
Only some bitter people who complain because
they didn't get an invite to the New Year's party
fireworks will light up the sky.
When I was jailed I stopped writing poetry,
if that's what you want to know.
Nothing is strange. I don't write anymore
I work almost every day.
Like I said, nothing happens here.
Stop pointing at my head.
And what else do you want to know
if the script of this novel has already been written?

1971

Las cosas no han cambiado.
Trabajo casi a diario y a diario miro al cielo.
Le he dicho que aquí no pasa nada.
Todo es tranquilo.
Este es el país de las cosas más extrañas.
No está ocurriendo nada y sin embargo el miedo,
la zozobra, el corazón nocturno y enemigo,
el hueco en el estómago,
las piernas casi muertas.
Las cosas no han cambiado.
El festival de la canción, la lotería,
la pobre dama que hereda una fortuna,
se transmiten gratis para tu diversión,
como ayer, como ahora, todo el día.
Nada ha cambiado, nada.
Sólo unos amargados que protestan porque
no los invitaron a la fiesta del Nuevo Año
les da por prender luces.
Desde que estuve preso ya no escribo poesía,
si es que eso le interesa preguntar.
Nada es extraño. Ya no escribo.
Trabajo casi a diario.
Ya les dije que aquí no pasa nada,
deje de apuntarme a la cabeza.
Y qué más quiere saber que usted no sepa,
si ya se ha escrito el guion de esta novela.

Amorak Huey

AMORAK AUTOCORRECTS TO AMORAL

which surely comes as no surprise to anyone
in the town where I grew up. I hated
that place. All those two-story New Deal homes

laid out in grids between churches.
The town mall where we practiced baseball
in summer, football in fall,

learning early the value of muscle
& God: a prayer before every game.
I’ve never felt so vulnerable, my bowed head

a lie. We had moved there
from 700 miles away & I always knew
I would leave. My first girlfriend

dumped me because of God.
She was right. Our mailman stopped by
to witness to my mother

about the nature of love.
My friends slipped New Testaments
into my bag at sleepovers.

This isn’t the whole story.
I still don’t listen very well
though it’s not true

that I hated it there. 
That girl did teach me to kiss,
after all, the possibilities

of tongue & the small miracle
of holding hands in the dark;
she taught me to believe

in innocence. Each spring, the river
flooded. So much time has passed
& now I watch my own daughter

ignoring me. I wonder
who she will break up with & why.
Where will she feel at home?

I drove her through that town once
on our way to the ocean.
Predictably, everything was smaller

than I remembered, the whole
experience less meaningful
than I hoped. An entire town

in need of a fresh coat of paint.
If God was still there,
we did not see him.

Darren Demaree

WITH AN EMPATHY SO FATAL #52

i can’t look at this
any other way
the world can be so dry

& i was born
with water
& i have given that

water to my children
& told them
to give it away

& they did not blink
they closed their eyes
& offered it

& now i am frightened
for their safety
there is no other way

Cheryl Dumesnil

FROM THE SPARROW AND THE TWIG

In the dream, I gave
birth to a baby girl,
small as the palm  

of my hand, translucent
skin stretched over
tiny bones. Her hip

blades, the nodules of her
spine—they reminded me
of the day my mother sliced

a cooked chicken breast
open, revealing a dark
architecture of vertebrae 

and ribs, the day I stopped
eating meat. Sparrow,
this baby’s bones

tasted like starvation.
Sparrow, this baby's
name was Delight.

* 

Was it The Sparrow & the Egg
or The Sparrow & the Twig—
the name of the café in the dream? 

Sparrow: spirit, bird, arrow.

Twig: what’s gripped before flying.

Egg: what’s held in the body, and then—

*

Mounds of books, double bagged and waiting
in the hallway, your favorites among them.

Trash bags engorged with clothes, even
the beaded cardigan your grandmother wore

on her honeymoon then you wore on yours.
Your wedding ring. The dried umbilical stubs—

first born, second born—yes, you saved them,
and now—nudging it all toward the cliff.

How many times are you willing
to let go? Until the last rung slips

from your hand? Until the only thing left
is you who have been here all along? 

*

Sparrow is

pecking at the sheet
            which is your skin

draped over the bars of her cage
            which are your ribs

When I wake I feel her
stuck and fluttering

under my left breast

*

In the dream, weeding the garden—

the tug and snap of roots,
the clover and the clover and the clover.

Turned earth smells of blood.
The notable absence of worms.

In the dream, the grieving
mother, the abandoned wife

arrive in the manzanita shadow—
their collective, thrumming ache—

and you tell them—How
dare you tell them?—Loss

is not the problem. Loss is
natural. Not every blossom bears fruit.

*

Let me tell you, she said,
the way you will be living

from this day forward
may have nothing to do

with the way you’ve lived
until now.

                       Are you ready?

*

The broken marriage
is not the problem.

The lost home
is not the problem.

The dead child—
How dare you say it—

is not the problem.
The story: This can't happen

is the problem.
The problem is believing

in anything but
the chemical substrate

of light + bird song + rain

*

Dear Sparrow,

In the dream she said,
If you leap, the net will appear.

So I launched off the cliff,
and Sparrow,

I haven’t stopped falling.

She kept her promise. Don’t you see?

*

Atom, atomos—
indivisible; that which

cannot be cut.
We thought.

For how long
did we believe

we were whole?

*

Light + Bird Song + Rain =
we are ever-changing

constellations
orbited by

an incomplete number
longing for more.

*

Black-tailed deer, malachite,
southwesterly breeze.

The up-swell of breath
expanding the robin's chest,

feathers refracting copper
in the morning light.

This, my love, is real:

the single atom buzzing
in the constellation of buzzing

that makes up a twig
or a sparrow or an egg.

Brynn Martin

MAPPING DESIRE

The first time I unfurl into the shower with a man
is also the first night I spend tied to a bed,

blindfolded. I cum again and again and again
until my legs kink together, trap his hand

so I can catch my breath. He is the first man
to consider my pleasure his pleasure,

to moan how he wants to be my best sex
and mean it, to pepper hickeys 

across my neck, stomach, inner thighs.
I am not a small woman,

my body a world atlas, thick with pages -
these purpling marks X my expanse 

like destinations on a sexual itinerary.
I make it a habit not to place myself near

thin people, paranoid my landscape
will look wider next to their territory.  

And yet, sleeping over for the first time
in the bed of a man with dainty wrists, 

who can fold like a roadmap,
I curl against his mountain range spine.

I don’t worry how it looks.

Angelique Zobitz

ALL OF OUR BUSINESS AND OURS

And so I will be micromanaging their interactions
for bias and inquiring daily: what she learned, how
she felt, and if they listened please be aware all
responses will be validated by a third party query
and The Revolution and if I should dislike the
information I receive, either I or her father, yes he
IS my husband, we are married, yes we were
married before we were pregnant, no he is not my
sugar daddy, yes he is White, nevertheless, I know,
she does look like her daddy, please stay focused,
one of us will be calling.

Issue 50 Contributors

Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet and author of eight books. She has recently been published in Kosmos Journal; Autism Parenting Magazine; Breathe Free Press; Spadina Literary Review;  Chronogram, and many others. Jerrice has facilitated creative writing with breast cancer survivors in New York, where she lives. 

A native of Córdoba, Veracruz, Estrella del Valle now lives in El Paso, Texas. Her most recent poetry collection, Calima: CAution LIve aniMAls, was published in 2018. Her poems also appear in the bilingual anthology La Canasta.

Darren Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire, which will be published in June of 2019 by Harpoon Books.  He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.  He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Cheryl Dumesnil’s books include two collections of poems, Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes (University of Pittsburgh Press) & In Praise of Falling (University of Pittsburgh Press); a memoir, Love Song for Baby X; & the anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos, co-edited with Kim Addonizio. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two sons and her wife, Sarah Richmond.

Kristin Eade is a writer and editor from Seattle, Washington. She has an ardent love for words, especially those that need a good edit, and enjoys daydreaming, playing with cats, and being in nature. Her poetry has been featured in Seattle University's literary magazine Fragments.

Amorak Huey is author of three books of poetry: Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018, winner of the Vern Rutsala Prize), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. A 2017 NEA Fellow in poetry, he is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

In a past century Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and one collection, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press). Another collection (from Lynx House) is in press.

Jasper Kennedy  is an organizer and avid crocheter from north Alabama. A medical student by day, they write to reconcile home, profession, identity, and disability. Their work has been published in Screen Door Review.

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas. His translations of Latin American literature include books by Claudia Apablaza, Carlos Bortoni, and Selfa Chew.

Brynn Martin is a Kansas native living in Knoxville, where she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee. She now works as the Literary Arts Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Contrary Magazine, Yes, Poetry, and Crab Orchard Review.   

Angelique Zobitz has most recently been published in Sugar House Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry's Poet Resist Series, Poets Reading the News, So to Speak: a feminist journal of language + art, SWWIM, Pretty Owl Poetry with additional forthcoming from Psaltery & Lyre, Mortar Magazine and others.  She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana with her husband, daughter, and a wild rescue dog. She can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz