RogueAgent

ISSUE 53
CONTENTS

AUGUST 2019

Kate Garrett
Brian Koukol
Jennifer Metsker & Kendall Babl
Sammie Downing
Sibani Sen
INTERVIEW:
Amy Bassin & Mark Blickley
Darby Lyons
Sharon Kennedy-Knolle
Kara Dorris
John Leonard
Ann Keniston

CONTRIBUTORS

Kate Garrett

SHADOWS

They follow me outside, faces featureless, limbs
long, leaving their cobwebbed corner to feed.

I carry their rucksack of dread into a blue-sky day
relieving these black-hole creatures of their burden

and making it mine. They’ve placed their world
on my shoulders, convinced me it lends balance

to the universe during a sleepless pre-dawn hour.
And I believed them, my treacle limbs and jellied

mind too tired to argue. But I know their weakness
and their fear – the scent of human blood. Wouldn’t

want to take it too far, they seem to say, a tremor
in the void of their bodies – the solidity of ours

too much for them, the promise of wrenching
rasping pain is a fear they will not name. A dance

through the dusk, they edge away – the snarl, the stab
held in my folded hands ticks down the rosebud hours.

Brian Koukol

(N)EVERGREEN

in the time of crushing crushes
my hands had better things to do
then pine for others to hold them
knowing without knowing
that small hands are more sensitive
and what they feel most is pain
for what are pines without their needles
but grotesque, unfit, and scorned?

now I am a bristlecone
my bark is set, my trunk is twisted
and a lonely hiker finds me beautiful
but my hands are gnarled claws
that scratch when they kiss skin
and time has contorted those fingertips
into barbs that hook themselves;
to touch now is to be touched
where the nerves are loathe to feel
beneath those calluses of burl.

Jennifer Metsker & Kendall Babl

UNINVITED IMAGES ARRIVING TO THE LIGHTLESS SHALE OF SLEEP

i.

In this poem light is a friend 
and the brain in its saline enclosure 
does not know light. 

It is you, its interface with the world 
who knows to remain in light.

Even fractured, the skull cannot avail
the brain of light. 

The incessant caring for the life in your body
is a custody battle between you and the sun.

ii.  

Deep in the ocean the loss of light 
is too great so you surface to a chalky
drawing of constellations. 

You destroyed two houses this way, 
drowning in depths
where others could not reach you.

In the black of winter,
you returned to the landness of the land,
the flavor of its soil, but you could not find 
release from gravity. 

iii.

On a glowing screen 
blind pallid chemotrophs 
clambour toward a diffusing array
issuing from lightless sulphur vents. 

High above, the ambition of spined things,
lumbers into unanticipated financial ruin.

Standing, you connect 
heaven and earth. Standing, 
you make heaven your lung 
and the ocean your piss.

iv.

The gregarious sun 
fills the cold hallways
of your anarchic rental endgame.

You turn from the scorched earth
and corroding hulks of prior disengagement 

to the ocean inside. 
Oxygen reaches the deep country of cells
carried on dark ferrous blood 

into an aviary of Hedera helix
strangling as it climbs. 

Sammie Downing

WASHING MY FATHER’S FEET

Sibani Sen

BOUND

Sleepless, we trace constellations on skin,
milky tracks, sheen, and in your eyes

contrails of that ascending feeling you’d had
when we first met, lords of our own faces.

Arm-in-arm we stare out into air rustling
with wishes, moth-struck, swept into a kind of waiting

like a season’s turning, or what weather feels like.
The desire to no longer fall out of ourselves,  

prickling at the neck, loosening hips with the look of years.
We stare as if to learn by heart our own baring.

The shackled nights bring on that intent,
the thought that some new feeling will appear

and what we already know will vanish.
So, the leaves, or a leaf, will tell us much. 

Knocking on the window-pane, the trees may stir,
magnificent as your hair silvering. In a moment,

in the darkness, I will reach for your hand
wondering, is there any strangeness left?

Amy Bassin & Mark Blickley talk about embodiment
and the creation of Dream Streams

Please describe your journey toward making this collaborative work of art. Did you both work on the text and the photos or was one person primarily responsible for each? What was it like to generate a collaborative artifact?

MB:  Four years ago Amy and I began our text-based art collaboration because we wanted to get into Three Rooms Press annual international journal of contemporary Dada writing & art, Maintenant. We were thrilled by their acceptance (our work has appeared in the past 5 issues). Amy is an interdisciplinary visual artist who at the time was focusing on her fine arts photography. I insisted on photoshopping drones flying out of her image’s mouth.  Amy hated the idea, but we did get “The Language of Love Parts 1&2” published. The success of our first collaboration in such a prestigious venue inspired us to attempt more of these text-based art experiments. After we published and exhibited our first half-dozen pieces, we decided to name this new series Dream Streams.  Our art and video collaborations are never smooth sailing affairs. We constantly battle over the content, but in the end we’ve been pretty successful with our final projects. Our arguments are often heated, but always rooted in respect for each other as artists. I’m primarily responsible for the writing and Amy for the images. Most often Amy’s images inspire my text, but we do have pieces in the series where the text inspired Amy’s visual work.  Amy is completely responsible for each Dream Streams layout presentation.

In your intro you mention you were inspired by Man Ray and Dada. More specifically, how has the process of producing  work for Dream Streams been influenced by the Dada movement and/or surrealism?

MB: Our inspiration from Man Ray and Dada/Surrealism isn’t so much about embracing any kind of strict visual or textural association with this artist or the two groups he was an integral part of, but more with their philosophy of an unbridled freedom of expression where the driving force for creation is so firmly rooted in subconscious free association.  Reading about and viewing the collaborations between Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp were particularly inspiring, as so many of them were born from such a sense of serious play.   The humor embedded within Man Ray and the Dadaists/Surrealists had a huge influence on our work and allowed us to move away from our beginnings of strictly intense, stream of consciousness texts to create pieces that weren't exclusively internally driven.  We began to augment caustic laments with more playful and upbeat visions.

You mention that the characters within Dream Streams are “ethereal night watchers.” Which character would you most like to be stuck in a dream with?

AB: I want to be in a dream with the character in “Terminal Blue,” as the blue tape slowly unravels when she twirls and twirls in a dance of self-liberation.

“Terminal Blue”
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This image is divided in half. On the right, a human figure (white with brown hair and brown eyes and clearly shirtless) has its head wrapped in blue paper. The left half of the image is a prescription note in black ink on white paper framed by a blue background, The prescription's heading says "DEA# 32462 / DR. JOWN P. BURTON / Podiatrist-Foot Specialist / 2018 Belmont Avenue, Suite 5E / Bronx, NY 10460 / (718) 364-3391." The rest of the prescription says: "Symptoms: Feeling suffocated, wrapped in despair, impaired vision, compulsive concealment. / Diagnosis: Extreme Millenial Anxiety Disorder (eMAD) / RX: TERMINAL BLUE therapy. Direct feet towards nearest airline terminal with blue colored waiting lounge/reservation counter. Purchase ticket to destination you always dream of visiting. / DO NOT buy ticket online or from airport kiosk. / YOU MUST interact with another human being to complete transaction. / Blue terminal setting is elemental color of water and sky that inspires tranquility, cools down blood pressure and creates open space feeling for communication with oneself and others." The bottom of the prescription includes the doctor's signature, a note that the prescription can be refilled twice, and a note that it must be dispensed as written.

MB: The character I would most like to be stuck in a dream with would be the “Screaming Mime.” This piece is an example of Amy creating an image based on my text. I want to pull the mime into a dream of repentance, to undo the guilt I felt after I witnessed this mime plying his craft outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I want this dream to give me the opportunity to applaud his performance, protect him and drop money into his hat instead of remaining silent except to laugh along with the horrible verbal assaults pedestrians screamed at him while he performed for donations. I got caught up in a group mentality and enjoyed the nasty things shouted at this poor guy. A few blocks after I walked away from his performance, I was seized with shame. I had participated in a crowd’s disrespectful attack of a serious artist. That night I wrote the poem in penance, trying to image how this poor man must’ve suffered from all the vulgar taunts that I supported by my laughing membership in a cruel sidewalk crowd.

“Screaming Mime”
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The night sky is dotted with yellow and orange lights. A purple face mask looks up at these lights from its place on the grass. The left side of the image says "Screaming / mime / I SHOULD SPEAK OUT WHEN THEY ABUSE / THIS PASTY-FACED ARTIST WHO DECIDED TO CHOOSE / BEING TRAPPED IN SILENCE WITH MAKE UP QUEER / I MAY NOT SPEAK, BUT I CAN HEAR / THE TAUNTS, THE INSULTS, AND THE HATE / TOWARDS STREET PERFORMERS WHO REFUSE THE BAIT / OR RIDICULED ANGER THROUGH VULGAR GESTURES / BELIEVING PERFORMANCE IS A CONTINUING SEMESTER / OR LEARNING TO GROW WITHIN PAINTED SMILE / IGNORE THE ASSHOLES. CONCENTRATE ON THE CHILD. / WHO :LAUGHS WITH JOY OR OPEN-MOUTHED WONDER / YET TOSSES NO COINS AS MY STOMACH THUNDERS / BREAKING THE SILENCE. BEGGING FOR BREAD. / MY INTESTINAL RUMBLINGS PLEAD TO BE FED / A STEADY DIET OF HUMAN COMPASSION / THROUGH THE CLINKINGS OF COINS IN AN APPRECIATIVE REACTION / TO MY ANCIENT ART AND ENDURING HUNGER / SELLING MYSELF LIKE A COMMON WHOREMONGER / HOPING TO SATISFY AN INSATIABLE CROWD / IN TIGHT FITTING SPANDEX, A SEDUCTIVE SHROUD / IGNORING LEWD SNEERS AT MY EXPOSED ANATOMY / THAT I'VE TWISTED AND STRETCHED IN HOPES THAT IT WOULD FLATTER ME / AS MY MUSCLES CONTORT AND MY BODY SINGS / A SILENT SONG THAT ONCE ENTERTAINED KINGS."

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

AB:

Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven
The Guerrilla Girls
Ana Mendieta
Hannah Wilke
Eva Hesse
Lorna Simpson
Martha Rosler
Self-Portrait, Man Ray

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?

AB:

cut, tear, hammer, collage, glue.
scream, ream, dream.
fry, cry, sigh and fly.
bead, read.

shrink, drink, wink, think.
see, be.
claw, thaw, straw, draw.
saint, taint, paint.
pray, play.
run, fun, done.
_____________

I studied academic figure drawing for years when I was painting, but this is not the only way to explore making art about the body. When I branched out into photography, I worked with ‘my body’ and created a series called Selfie Fictions. The photograph used in “Terminal Blue,” as well as numerous other self-portraits sprinkled throughout Dream Streams is from that series.  In essence, I see them as anti-selfies, because they are fictional self-portraits.

One day I photographed myself after I covered my entire face in blue tape with only one eye exposed to communicate how I often don’t feel heard, how I often inhibit myself and don’t trust my gut reactions.  In contrast, I did figure drawings from a model, and created a series called, No Head, No Pain, where I drew the models without any heads. I was struggling with depression and wishfully thought if I didn’t draw the heads, my pain would go away. In Rogue Agent Journal Issue 52 there are a few of my collages from a recent series, “Cut-outs” where I incorporate images of female figures sourced from the Internet and magazines with drawing.
 
Many artists use their bodies as canvas including: Hannah Wilke, Ana Mendieta and Yves Klein.  Hannah Wilke shaped chewing gum into vaginas and photographed them after she placed them on her face and torso. Mendieta, known for her ‘earth-body’ pieces created female silhouettes using nature and her body as both her canvas and her medium and exhibited the work as photographs.

Darby Lyons

DETACHMENT

The doctor tells me         to avoid bar fights
roller coasters         and whiplash.
I assure her         I can easily avoid
            two of three         decrease my odds
of further damage.         She calls        what happened        
            posterior vitreous detachment.         I understand        
two of three words        and I look up        the other        
            laugh at the cliché         how tired
the metaphor         it’s about aging         shrinking
            pulling away.         My doctor        who might be
all of twenty-eight         hardly smiles        
            when I point out         the irony         of avoiding risk
to prevent         further detachment.        
            She tells me I should         let her know
if these things happen –        more dark floating shapes        
            brief flashes of light         or something like

a curtain closing.

I tell the doctor        only two         of those three
            horrify me.         Again she hardly smiles
And I can’t help         but laugh.

Sharon Kennedy-Knolle

PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS DELILAH

With long shears, ridiculous
I cut his hair on the patio,
layering locks, combing out knots,
my hands fumble in the big onyx-handled grip;
yet with each snip, he softens,
a little overcome,
dependent on a wife’s good offices. 

We’re cost-cutting,
barber money, or is it more?

He blinks away the stray strands,
temples a tawny down.

For such beauty, I do it freely.

His book falls; his head presses close
he lets me, lets me scissor in,
close as I please--

Mine and Love’s prisoner, you
Whole to myself. 

Curls tumble onto the flagstones,
ants tow-truck the silky snippets.
They will make good on this.

Kara Dorris

A PHOBIA OF DYING IF MOTION STOPS

I know what I’d wish for
if I fell from the sky

I know—lying on my back in black
lace panties that ride
tight like my skin in your bed when
you aren’t home—  

I know what I need & it isn’t you

Or the gold-gilded mirror in my hand
saying it was never me

but something else—the way
a porn star gazes & gazes, moans to make
you believe it’s story

more than bodies, bodies more than
rivers of sweat & release

So we dance
             to keep our breastplate cities rising
             bones from solidifying

to keep the right to walk away

Backed against a subway door
we wear motormen gloves to feel  

bodies without payment

Your hands/my hands
ATMs,
sundials or walking canes

never our own
in a room full of other hands

We’re dust, cover-ups

Sierra Madre treasure masked
in artificial plants, breasts & sweeteners  

What would we do if we lost electricity?

Let the constant dark make our eyes colder
forget how to absorb heat?

My skin, a jealous, deficient warmer
craves an excuse
to carve power-lines into licorice

Rescue sirens blare, docks & stars wreck away

What river, after straightened & channeled
would revert back?

What river wouldn’t?

What body would be content
with being just another in the dark?

John Leonard

WHAT WE EAT TO SURVIVE

Alone, the air starts smelling like
scrambled eggs or a rat that died
in the wall.  Mayflower sons.
Puritan daughters. That sort of lineage.

Alone, thoughts detach from mildewed
lamp shades and crawl across the ceiling.
They crash and peer under doors with lurching
frames as words begin to linger…

“Garden”          “Until”         “Shore Leave”  

But nothing ever opens.

Alone, one voice in particular,
which the train across town drowns out.

One in particular murmurs the words
to an ancient lullaby about the leagues
of suffering which half a century can bring.

Alone, and the first thing he sees when he comes home
are the bones of his father and his mother’s milky eyes. 

What we eat to survive: 
Cast iron shadows, polished war medals,
sister’s night gown left ragged in the corner.

Ann Keniston

SYCAMORE ODE

Permit me this
                         redundancy. I dug
inside my bone to find
the right material, a fastener or dark.

Let me join me
              to myself
right here. And release
my unremarkable
heart.
In myths, the fleeing girl
becomes a tree, the sacred tree,
the tree of patience. Again

the sycamore has spilled
its bark over the ground.

Here is where my invisible
begins. At the scar or border, lip,
my shore. My little wound has been
sewn up
with thread.
         And look: the birds

 are also here, invisible but known.
Geese pass over in the night. Here

is where I was torn and then
remade. It is
both raw and smooth.

Issue 53 Contributors

Kendall Babl is a sculptor, musician, arborist, and writer who has exhibited work internationally. He has been published in Kipseli and Sound Sculpture and is the founder of the art agency BU-CON which can be found at bucon.earth.

New York interdisciplinary artist Amy Bassin and writer Mark Blickley work together on text-based art collaborations and videos. Their video, Widow's Peek: The Kiss of Death, was selected to the 2018 International Festival of Experimental Video and Film at Bilbao, Spain. In 2018 their video collaboration, Speaking In Bootongue, was nominated for ‘Best Experimental Film’ award at City University of New York 10th Annual Film Festival, and toured internationally as part of the Seattle based Exquisite Corpse film, The Space Between Cities. They also published a text-based art chapbook, Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground (Moria Books, Chicago). Bassin is co-founder of the international artists cooperative, Urban Dialogues. Blickley is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. Their text-based art book, Dream Streams, was just published by Clare Songbird Publishing House (New York). Find more at www.amybassin.com and www.markblickley.com .

Kara Dorris holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and is currently a visiting professor of English at Illinois College. Her full-length collection, Have Ruin, Will Travel, was published by Finishing Line Press (2019). She has also published four chapbooks. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, I-70 Review, Puerto del Sol, Waxwing, and Crazyhorse, as well as the anthologies Beauty is a Verb and The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked.

The poet Ed Roberson once told Sammie Downing, "You only have one life and you only have one work." She's taken this advice perhaps too literally and has lived in 7 states and two countries. She's been a housekeeper, a huntress and a fraud investigator. Her novella The Family that Carried Their House on Their Backs is forthcoming from Half Mystic Press and you can find her at www.herearelions.com.

Kate Garrett is a writer, witch, and editor, among other things. Her poetry is widely published, and her first full-length collection, The saint of milk and flames, was published in April 2019 by Rhythm & Bones Press. Born and raised in rural southern Ohio, Kate moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield, England with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk.

Ann Keniston’s recent poems have appeared in Yale Review, Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of a full-length book of poems The Caution of Human Gestures (Wordtech, 2005) and a chapbook November Wasps (Finishing Line, 2013), as well as several scholarly books on contemporary American poetry. She lives in Reno, NV, where she is a professor of English at University of Nevada, Reno.

A graduate of Vassar College, Sharon Kennedy-Knolle holds an MFA and doctoral degree from the University of Iowa. Her poetry has appeared in Potomac Review, Edison Literary Review, Free State Review, Jelly Bucket, Chaffin Journal, Virginia Normal, Qwerty, FRiGG, Chantwood Magazine Lindenwood Review, Zone 3, The Round, and the Chicago Quarterly Review, among others. Her chapbook Black Wick was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Tupelo Snowbound Chapbook Contest. She lives and works in New York.

Brian Koukol, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, now makes his home among the salt breezes and open spaces of California's Central Coast. A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the majority of his work, which is written with the aid of voice recognition software. His words have appeared in The Baltimore Review, The Eckleburg Review, and Wordgathering, amongst other places.

John Leonard is a Language Arts teacher and assistant editor of Twyckenham Notes, a poetry journal based out of South Bend, Indiana. His works have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rappahannock Review, Mud Season Review, Rockvale Review, IthacaLit, and Genre: Urban Arts. His work is forthcoming in Chiron Review, December Magazine, and North Dakota Quarterly. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana with his wife and pets. You can find him on Twitter at @jotyleon.

Darby Lyons lives in Cincinnati and recently retired from teaching English and creative writing in Wyoming, Ohio. She received her MFA from the Sewanee School of Letters, and her work has appeared in Mud Season Review, 8 Poems, SWWIM Every Day, and other publications. She reads poetry submissions for The Cincinnati Review.

Jennifer Metsker’s poetry has been published in Beloit, Birdfeast, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, The Seattle Review, Rhino and many other journals. Her audio poetry has been featured regularly on the BBC Radio program Short Cuts.

Sibani Sen teaches creative writing and South Asian history. She has a PhD in Indology from Harvard University and an MFA from Boston University. Her current projects include forthcoming new poetry, a translation of an eighteenth century epic from Sanskrit, Persian and Bengali, and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra.