RogueAgent

ISSUE 55
CONTENTS

OCTOBER 2019

Jennifer Jackson Berry
Denise Leto
D. G. Host
Kate Horowitz
A. Martine
ART: Toti O’Brien
Meg Yardley
Danielle Isaiah
Juliet Cook & j/j hastain
Sarah Taylor Foltz
Emily Rose Cole

CONTRIBUTORS

Jennifer Jackson Berry

I HAVE NEVER KNOWN A BODY THAT DIDN’T TOUCH ITSELF

i have never known a body that didn’t touch itself
half moons of darkened skin under breasts
b-belly double bumps that shift & wiggle with
the slightest brush

we know hands strong enough to lift

fingers nimble enough to open flesh whether thighs
or lips

& when we kiss—

when you kiss my neck i am every cliche i am
meant to be denied

jelly

aflutter stars

so bright

Denise Leto

MYTHICAL MAP OF A BIRD

She eats her own form.
Spits out an artery of feathers.
The prey spans old powdery drapery.

vent
a small hole in the body of a bird through which waste or eggs emerge

origin of coordinates
points in a system of coordinates which serve as a zero point

In the missing of small ponds:
a hat, a phone book, an hourglass,
the lack of a reason.

beak
hard curved or pointed part of a bird’s mouth 

latitude
angular distance, in degrees, minutes, and seconds of a point north or south

The police are a mystery in this legend.
They knock loudly on the door.
They come and go, come and go.

talon
sharp nails on the feet of some birds that kill other animals for food

elevation
vertical distance of a point above or below a reference surface

I sweep the broken glass. Put up a plywood board.
The kids huddle. A rope of breath
around each exhalation.

down
the small soft feathers of a bird

azimuth
horizontal direction clockwise from the meridian

M. lies awake with a flashlight pointed at the door.
I lie awake with a flashlight pointed at her.
We fall asleep without sleep.

wingtip
point at the end of a wing

erosion
group of natural processes including weathering, dissolution, abrasion, corrosion

A spectral relief in the garden.
I draw inside avium animalia.
I remember something more.

web
thin layer of skin between the toes of some birds that helps them swim

continuous tone
an image not broken into dots by a photographic screen

The sense of viscera on a wet branch.
We look for our bodies in an infinite line.
I want to thank her for shape.

quill
molted flight feather of a large bird

contour interval
difference in elevation between two adjacent lines

At the café the girls play us a song.
I keep changing my shoes.
They give me amulets.

crest
set of feathers on the top of the heads of some birds

high water mark
a line or mark left upon tidal flats, beaches, or along the shore of a rivulet

D. G. Host

FIRE OPAL (AN EXPLODED DIAGRAM)

1. 

[an image of a person is drawn in portions
with paper folded after each portion so that later
participants cannot see the earlier portions]:

/a real woman stands behind her self             where sightlines
trail from its edges    umbilical contrails     i forget sometimes
where they stop so she or i can begin  it's a game   
where we both pretend    the other in us
is in the wrong.

3.

 [it has been recommended for use
a tool for teaching]:

/evocations of certainty  contracted like disease    
or labor         gender is to body as cleaver is to meat                       
which only sounds hyperbolic if we choose
to ignore       how the wild cow   gives birth to certified beef        
long before going under   literal knives               or how          
one word is two       while two is one word       (like a mirror?
is each word           
            looked in two?)

5.

 [each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence...]:

/i consulted a surgeon once who proceeded   matter-of-factly
to palpate my breast tissue          (his-words)
lamenting aloud the recent lack of growth   as if we hadn't noticed
or had failed him   somehow                 gender is a factory           
of likenesses, licked clean                of corrosive facts    pictures
Consequences          arranged in sequence make photos      syntheses                
look like losses.

7.

[...whether by following rules or by being allowed to see
only the end of what previous persons contribute]

/the surgeon assumes me,  like all the others   takes another body
upon himself               an incomplete equation   dry as his hands               
on half-willing skin                 clean as his diction is        each nipple 
converted to numbers                  abstract dimensions        
this  sterile cold      out of which my body      like one giant nipple        
imperceptibly stiffens.

9.

[as a last step
a player may label the drawing (still
unseen) with someone's name]:

/figure 1. morning glare, unbridled by clouds, cuts everything out of itself.

/figure 2. an open fire in the prairie night like a bubble throbbing
            distinct without any definite edges.

/figure 3. every child knows a sunbeam sufficiently narrowed through any transparent
            medium        concave and/or convex               can make the ants stop being ants 

/figure 4. no flashbulb will ever deliver a human image as real as Vesuvius did
            the more "natural" way.

/figure 5. the screen glows from between the words so you can see between them,
            but we will never see them alive, again,       nor as dead as the day they were saved.

/figure 6. For everything we touch (and we are never not touching)
something touches back.

/figure 7. that blinking red dot is probably farther out than you're thinking, but still
it penetrates the surface of your eye   like nothing—there is simply
no room anywhere   for distance.

/figure 9. being voids.

Kate Horowitz

NEUROPATHY

The lateral spinothalamic track [sic] carries fibers associated with superficial and deep pain … To best evaluate this
track [sic], one should employ a pin prick or other sharp object. A torqued-break of a ‘wooden’ tongue depressor yields
the perfect disposable sharp-dull instrument … 

            Oldham H. and Hunter A.J., in “Peripheral Neuropathy”

Once a man on the other side
Of a small room held up

A tongue depressor,
Snapped it in two.

Showed me
One splintering half.

Close your eyes.
Lift your shirt.

Then he stood over me.
Tell me when you feel something.

A. Martine

HILLS TO DIE ON

By contrast, they looked brave, the two women facing the drunk passersby
Who would not take back the casual abuse lathered from their leering mouths
Enraged, the women stood rooted on the sidewalk, shouting down their own instincts to fall back
And I thought: that amour-propre, that love of oneself, where has mine dispersed
Yes, I would have stirred, could have added to the refrain, should have led the charge
      But dust weighed my grit to a halt. My heart was dead, I loved nothing, least of all myself

Sometimes I think: these slow burns, they are thankless; the world twists and leaves you
Baffled where you stand. Teeth grind as you take your thought vacations
And anesthetize your most vivacious impulses. I have done that letting go, that dutiful letting go
While I am thumbed like a slab of viscous meat by rugged, undeserving hands
Sometimes I think: one day my shrill heart will make you judder: but ’tis slow, and ’tis thankless
      By contrast, they look brave, those women who face off with drunk passersby

The wind bit and pinched at me, on that icy sidewalk. The two women’s voices
Marrying into that most formidable roar, silencing the catcalls
I used to be just as spirited, just as ablaze with indignation: these days I am —
The thought a heinous one I never want to carry to its end —
Just jaded. In the face of brutes whose pincers harass the wounds they’ve made
      Who never take back the leering abuse lathered from their casual mouths

The wind bit and pinched at me like fingers and eyes have done so many times
Right then it occurred: these two, maybe they are new at this thing, this woman-ing woman-ness
They have not yet felt their hope deflate and die in their hearts owing to a
Trauma or two, expertly aimed their way. Perhaps they have not yet lost their footing
Over innocuous hurts: or worst of all, they are just not jaded yet
      Enraged, they stood rooted on the sidewalk, shouting down their own instincts to just let it go

I bent away to another time in place, younger, yet so much less narrow
When certainty was an afterthought of strength: or perhaps was it arrogance all along
I collected them like dinted trophies, those insults, because they were my vindication
A point of pride — you look like a bitch, why won’t you crack a smile —
Because it meant I had favored principle over Jaded, that dawning Jaded
      And I hummed: that amour-propre, that love of oneself, where has mine fucked off to

Alternating between distress and disdain but with grace, always the grace
Seer of the souls, I have long understood the small workings of one’s hatred for women
But that impulse to look beyond the ugliness of the offense, it is depleted
It’s those words — I forgive — which I cannot say because the give
It does not sit well with me, not when all else has been given away
      Still, I watched my sisters and I thought: could have stirred, could have added to the refrain

Girl, you are too old to be this dishonest. This, here, is where your ego goes to die
This is the place where your aspirations sour like forgotten cream
On sidewalks where hideous realizations are made and dull epiphanies are had
Where you confront your nesting-doll emotions and your infinite faithlessness
Where you watch women you could have been, could still be, do what jaded has robbed you of
      It is known, and it feels right: my heart is dead, and I love nothing, least of all, myself.

Toti O’Brien

CORPUS FRANGIBLE 1: MAN WITH THE FLOWER CHEST

CORPUS FRANGIBLE 2: FAST RUNNER

CORPUS FRANGIBLE 3: BAJADERA

CORPUS FRANGIBLE 4: MAN IN BLUE

Artist statement:

I have called this series 'Corpus Frangible', as I associate these sculptures with our body's intrinsic fragility—the same quality that makes it extremely precious. Therefore these bodies of clay, metal, found objects and stone, improbably and hazardously linked, to me are the equivalent of jewels—icons, strange and beloved.

Meg Yardley

WHAT GRIEF DOES IN NOVEMBER

She keeps a hand on my lower back
at five a.m. as I stumble
to the toilet. She crouches in my belly
wincing and clenching her hands.
She turns on the light
so I can track blood and tissue,
what slips out.

She puts dark glasses over my eyes
as if the clouds were bright.
She becomes stupid,
slaps her own hand for being slow.
She speaks in a monotone, mutters
so that I can’t understand what she means.

She soaks up comfort
and then wrings it out of herself.
She looks at the clock, bewildered,
scrambling the numbers,
turning up the static. She is afraid
to leave me alone.

Danielle Isaiah

SELF-PORTRAIT AS THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

My body reminds me that it is my owner      took out an interminable lease on my parcel
of being Tells me        I should be more obedient when it tells my head      to descend
into pillowy soft obscurity       I am waiting at the person-sized dog door    I am tired of the sun
out there           unrelenting faucet in here I wish the rug wasn’t so threadbare My body tells me
I used to sing to it       I don’t remember what that means    or what is a world outside
I have painted the walls but never finished
and my body grates    likes things to be done       or to not be done When I see it,
I sweep myself under the rug               and wait for news   from outside         I have a clear view (of
white) (of blue) (of) and the rest                       (of nothing)      news comes    and I am waiting and
I am waiting
& my body laughs but I am seas and seas of paper/milk/snows 

*

I tell my body to OPEN UP and all the hinges pop like a candy bar so much (blown sugar)
spun past its limits I cradle the heat of me like it is the graceful thing I wish I could
lift from harm into health I look at my body like it isn't and don't know
what to love / revise / photograph I look at my body until my body looks
away and inside is quietly stirring flesh&sinew&atrophy I sit inside my body
like a cell or a tower or a monk with no monastery or more of a dead mall abandoned
to possums and ants how do I claim to love living here when I'm always longing
into the windows of a house next door always doing something to cover / alter /
hide the thing of its meat

*

this is the exact degree of pain to consider the speed of every muscular opening
face tilting away grating ankles each irregular surface
and thought exquisite visible bursting in the cradle skull reaching
warm into tendons (of all) (of needlespark) (of bowstring of snapping) I compose
my spine like a letter meandering but going on the wavering column steam
piping (from the potholes) of my sight out and out however (dis)jointing

*

Even when I recede away my body looms over me immeasurable tall nautilus
chambers that call & call I can never reach the center
I am always walking into my body in the dark finding unexpected walls & aperture
From here the translucence of flesh is obvious as the glittering necklace of nerves
encasing me (enervating) (glassdust) I am neural too
and imperfectly I have water droplets skin against sweetly fractal bone acid
kiss of new (citrus fruit / flame) My body has these too coded in its very interior
being & it cannot escape the ways I have spent it

*

I remember when my body said yes to everything

Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

FOR CLASSIFICATION PURPOSES

1.

I don't want to dive into a fake orgasm contest
unless the prize is a lifetime supply of pie.

But not cherry
or a Ken Doll who has absolutely no interest
in my vagina. I only want friends
all around. Including a friendship between me 
and my vagina
and a heaping helping of black raspberry
with homemade whipped cream on top.

We all have different taste buds and
even the masculine aperture in the middle of my soul's space
is a specialty filling. The way I see it,
your hospitality movement might be a scone 
with a tiny leech inside on speaker phone.

Or it might be a landscape filled with custard-laced hospital food.
Just take me to the hospital morgue already and get it over with.

2.

Classify the child that comes out
as other than

what anyone previously thought. However,
your classification technique must not involve
a knife cutting into an unknown body in order
to collect extra terrestrial flesh,
to pry intro cream that floats up to the sky.

It has to be much more
free than that. Freer than me
from whence it came.

We don't wrench out every bite of pie filling
because that would debilitate the crust.
We don’t try to unearth our whole life’s story in the memoir
about how we felt the first time we watched  E.T.
We don't maintain the exact same flavor forever.
Connective tissue eventually rips apart;

flutters down from the scaffolding
and lands in its own new space.

Sarah Taylor-Foltz

COMPLICATIONS IN THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE PHOENIX: A STUDY OF COMBUSTION

The scientific literature regarding the life cycle of the Phoenix is gravely incomplete for lack of research. The bulk of the work either focuses on the beautiful plumage, the strange regeneration process, or the monetary value of her tears.

Because of her regeneration process, some cultures view the Phoenix as a symbol of life, death, and rebirth. 

There is very little information about the burning.

When she has had quite enough, the Phoenix combusts. What we know about this stage is murky at best. In my own studies, I found that the fire may last for several years. The pain is extraordinary. The flames eradicate the feathers instantaneously. The flesh, however, smolders. The Phoenix burns in agony, in extreme cases. It is true that third degree burns cauterize the nerves, and the pain relents, for a time. It is an atrocity of science that the burning stage is constantly overlooked.

The truth of the Phoenix must be acknowledged. To fully understand, one must consider the burns, the ash, the charred living flesh. The malodorous heat exposes lumps of pink and red tissue and leaves behind a crusty, blackened exterior.

Regeneration is often as painful as the burning. The Phoenix may lie in stasis: breathing, staring at nothing obvious to the observer. She may eat ravenously, or be virtually anorexic. She is likely to bite or weep with equal ferocity as her skin reappears, stretched taut over new, fledgling meat. The first feathers resemble down, wispy and soft, and she is prone to shake from the shock of them, the energy they take. Her feathers will, reliably, grow into brilliant gold and crimson, sometimes blue and purple, iridescent in the sun. After careful study, it has been noted that, after the burning, the plumage patterns are similar, but never exactly the same. She is more than a symbol. She forces us to decide how to feel and how to react to the monument of her suffering before she flies away.

Emily Rose Cole

SPELL FOR THE END OF THE MS FLARE

Always the same, return & return, like riptide,
like nightmare. No—like the witch’s warning:
what you cast will return to you three times three,
a reminder that magic begets magic begets
consequences—breakfast’s black mug of coffee
reincarnates itself as a bladder spasm, an afternoon
of self-selected house arrest. Last night’s extra hour
awake resurfaces as the glimmer of molasses in the brain’s
gas tank. Dead engine. Each relapse makes of me an object  

at rest. It’s so easy to imagine this as punishment—cause
& effect. Present action equals future damage. Little wonder
that the adjective & verb forms of degenerate are spelled
the same way: I am degenerate, so I degenerate. Goddess,

in place of such unuseful language, grant me a new word
for disrepair. Bar from my lips all apologies. Blessed be.

Issue 55 Contributors

Jennifer Jackson Berry is the author of The Feeder (YesYes Books, 2016), and her most recent chapbook Bloodfish was published in 2019 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of their Keystone Chapbook Series. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Emily Rose Cole is the author of a chapbook, Love & a Loaded Gun, from Minerva Rising Press. She has received awards from Jabberwock Review, Philadelphia Stories, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2018, Wordgathering, River Styx, and American Life in Poetry, among others. She is a PhD candidate in Poetry and Disability Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.

Kate Horowitz is a poet, essayist, science writer, and educator in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared most recently in Yes Poetry, SIREN, and Small Poems for the Masses. She tweets @delight_monger and blogs at thingswrittendown.com.

D. G. Host is a writer, occultist, visual artist, feral autodidact and experimental practitioner currently inhabiting Providence, RI. Shx has contributed to the anthology RUFFLES REPAIR AND RITUAL, as part of the inaugural exhibit of the newly renovated historic "wedding cake house", a project of the Dirt Palace collective. Shx also has short fiction forthcoming in VASTARIEN, a journal from Grimscribe Press.

Danielle Isaiah got her MFA in Poetry at Western Michigan University, where she also served as Layout Editor for New Issues Poetry & Prose. Danielle currently balances work as an English instructor with poetic feminist mutiny. Her down time is occupied by sewing, coffee snobbery, wrangling cats, and cooking with reckless abandon.

Denise Leto is a multidisciplinary poet and writer. She wrote the book of poetry for the collaborative performance Your Body is Not a Shark (North Beach Press). Most recently she collaborated on the dance Bluets #1-40 at the University of Santa Cruz. She co-authored, with Amber DiPietra, the chapbook Waveform (Kenning Editions). Her work has appeared in numerous publications. Denise was awarded the Orlando Prize in Poetry and the Breadloaf Poetry Fellowship in Sicily.

A. Martine is a trilingual writer, musician and artist, an Assistant Editor at Reckoning Press and a Managing Editor of The Nasiona. Her collection, "AT SEA" was shortlisted for the 2019 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize. Some words found or forthcoming in: Berfrois, The Rumpus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, South Broadway Ghost Society, RIC Journal, Lamplight, TERSE. Journal, Gone Lawn, Truancy Mag, Crack the Spine, Confessionalist Zine, Ghost City Review. @Maelllstrom/www.maelllstrom.com.

Toti O’Brien’s mixed media have been exhibited in group and solo shows, in Europe and the US, since 1995. She has illustrated several children’s books and two memoirs. Her artwork is on the cover of several books and it was most recently featured in Scryptic, Rappahannock, and Arkana.

Sarah Taylor-Foltz is an MFA candidate at Wilson College. She writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She teaches high school English. She imagines a radically beautiful future. She lives in rural Pennsylvania with a large brood of rescue animals.

Meg Yardley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in publications including SWWIM, Literary Mama, Bodega, Naugatuck River Review, and District Lit.