RogueAgent

ISSUE 69
CONTENTS

DECEMBER 2020

J. Walsh
Clara Burghelea
Ann Pedone
Catherine Rockwood
Sloan Asakura
Pietra Dunmore
Jessica Covil
Paula Harris
Veronica Kornberg
Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani

CONTRIBUTORS

J. Walsh

WHEN ALL THIS IS DONE

I want, I think, to be held together.
I open windows on difficult clothing.
I say sartorial, search couture, type bespoke.

I shop for boots that lace to my thigh, leather
made of organic grass grazing Italian cows
who sleep on waterbeds until they grow soft and large.

I review email from a tailor who calls me Madame
tells me how to measure myself, since I must,
what a shame how we are reduced, isn’t it,
but surely his corset dress will bring me love
and comfort me through these terrible times.

I consider lingerie that buckles together
in places I can barely reach on my own
or ties with silk threads too fine to be so strong,
everything crafted to do favors where I need them.

I have carts full, orders ready to finalize.
Somewhere a Frenchman waits on my waist,
and somewhere a nimble-fingered seamstress
pulls tight the stitches of lingerie I nearly bought.
A new calf moves into the barn stall emptied
for the boots I have messaged about, all but paid for.

I stay home. I cycle two outfits, rarely bathe.
When asked I say I am working.
I consider who I could be in the event of survival.

Clara Burghelea

BODY TIME ACCORDING TO MY OVARIES

is somewhat fluid & fails to run by any known
clock. Instead, it strikes at its own convenience.

I have told my friend, Raluca, my ovaries are fast
to set free the eggs. Earlier each month, as if sweeping 

out the old to make space for what’s ahead. She
nodded, a shared tenderness in her eyes. All these

b words we accommodate each month: bloaty,
bleeding, bitchy, a metronome of the female syntax.

The depletion of the egg informs the texture of my days,
their poppy pod ripeness or the draining thin limbs.  

An animal in limbo: sheer want, self-doubt bouts, mood
swings. Days that feel glued together, body sedated

by uterine power, throbbing and twitching under the
gaze of the ovum. The way she touches my hand.

Ann Pedone

MEDEA AFTER JUST HAVING BEEN DIAGNOSED AS A NYMPHOMANIAC

You’re going to have to tell me what that means. He’s Greek. English is his third language. I want to tell him that desire is like a weather of the mind. But I know he’s looking for a more precise definition. You could say it means that a woman can’t get enough. Only women? Yes, actually. I think it has something to do with nymphs and Greek mythology. You know. Apollo. Dionysus. Or maybe it was just some crazy theory of Freud’s. I can never remember.

I take his hand. I know he’ll be asleep soon. And move it down between my legs. He doesn’t resist. I move it further down. To that place that seems to lie on the other side of attention. Exists always on the other side of winter. I’m going to eat you. I’m going to eat all of the light out of you. I watch myself turn into a body of glass. First flame, then the ache of something slow. Ancient. Something that feels almost like metamorphosis.

Catherine Rockwood

MY HANDS ARE COVERED IN BLOOD

my own, the monthly,
but it looks like a vivisection.

Someone familiar with middle-aged menstruation
composed the curse of Eve:

said, at the beginning
as at the beginning of the end.

The specific viciousness
of the scholiasts still startles me, even though –

changing my underwear, photographing clots 
to show my doctor, because she asked: 

washing the toilet seat to erase 
the butcher’s print of my thighs—

Sloan Asakura

MARCH

If loneliness had a face, it’d be mine—
eyes so swollen from tears they cannot shut comfortably.
The street light pokes through the blinds and
I can almost hear you saying,
This is all in your head.
You’ll be fine.

In my dreams
            I take scissors to my tongue.
            It snaps like a rubber band.
            I watch the blood pool behind my bottom teeth.
            My face becomes red first,
            and then pale
            and my eyes roll back to watch my brain
            shut off all its lights, close all its blinds,
            just watch the night filter through lens and black iris
            until dark settles in
            and the body is empty,
            puddled on the floor into another puddle.

 And I wake—
icy sweat, the heart seeks to escape the body
sit up and touch my tongue, just to be sure—
and I hear you again,
Literally nothing has changed.
You’re going to be okay.

I fall back asleep with my fingers in my mouth.
I fall back asleep with my eyes swollen open.

Pietra Dunmore

UNATTRACTIVE

Naked, I stood
My hair fluffing out
An unstructured curl,
soft like cotton candy
He doesn’t feel attracted to me
When I wear my hair like that.

I lay,
eyes to the ceiling
he can’t perform
I think it’s your hair,
it’s not swingy.
Like the women on his walls
who looked nothing like me.

Jessica Covil

COFFEE HABIT

I have a habit of pouring more coffee
than I'll drink, and this self-knowledge
always hits me while I'm brewing.
I then carefully measure out
the same, wrong, amount 
of water and flavored coffee grounds
anyway, maybe thinking
today will be different,
or I will be.
And what inevitably happens is that
I get side-tracked,
holding the warm cup 
in the curve of my hand,
or less romantically leaving it there
on the coffee table,
while I dilly and dally
and the drink runs cold.

So I microwave the coffee
two or three times,
before finally giving up on the burnt taste
of what was already too acidic 
in the first place.
I am having a hard time knowing
if I like coffee at all,
or if I ever did,
or if I ever will (again?)
but it seems some part of me
is hanging onto the fact—
actually hinging on the habit.
Is it true
that if one day, I wake up,
and decide to skip the coffee,
someone who I could've been
will just sit there in the pantry,
in the mug I might've held,
and sipped from,
draining the drink to the last dregs?
Or, if that's really me
inside that cup of coffee,
will I just sit there, still,
colder by the minute
and losing my flavor
until someone does me the courtesy
of pouring me out—

Paula Harris

LYING IN BED WITH CRAMPS SO BAD THAT I WANT TO REACH MY OWN HAND INSIDE MY BODY AND RIP MY UTERUS OUT, I REALISE THAT BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER WOULD BE HIGHLY PROFICIENT AT STAIN REMOVAL AND THEREFORE MIGHT HAVE SOME GOOD TIPS ON REMOVING BLOOD STAINS FROM G-STRINGS (AND ALL OTHER SHAPES OF UNDERWEAR)

I figure the first thing Slayers are taught – beyond how to slay—
is an effective technique for getting vampire dust out of their hair and clothes

but there must be demon blood (of all colours and viscosities)
as well as other demonic bodily fluids that need to be washed out
along with the Slayer’s battle wounds that have leaked red on her clothes

maybe it’s part of the Watcher’s responsibilities, to deal with all the stains
but, either way, someone amongst them has a well-stocked laundry cupboard

no matter what kind of vessel I offer to catch the blood
at some point on day one or two or three – or all of these –
it’ll be overwhelmed and I will feel the rush inside me
as the blood surges past and there I’ll be, with bloody underwear
(and sometimes trousers that are now also bloody at the crotch and inner thigh) 

I gave up on underwear in any colour other than black or dark purple a long time ago
which makes the blood stains easier to deal with
although I miss the teal g-string that made my skin look great
but which I bled through – beyond saving – the second time I wore it

there are days when I get sick of the smell of my own blood
and I think about Buffy arriving home, stomping her boots on the door mat
so that she doesn’t drag too much evil through the house
going upstairs and taking out a tissue,
blowing her nose to get rid of all the dust

Veronica Kornberg

RESULTS PENDING

My dog lifts her nose to the wind. Spine fur spikes from the root. 

The ancient stone carvings at Monte Alban— Dancers— are renamed Captives.

Take a moment.  Pretzel your body.  What do you call yourself now?

Image may contain: 1 person, spume, power tool, indoors, and close up. 

I want to see the Botticelli hair of that girl gliding toward me in a convertible.

Instead, my mouth fills with sardines.

I skipped alongside my father, pigtails flying. When I reached up, it was not his hand.

An orchestra with no string section plays Dvorják’s New World Symphony in the town square.

30 miles south, orcas feed on whales; mothers teach their young to hunt calves.

It could be bad. Or maybe hyacinths, like fragrant bruises.

I like dancing but only when I feel safe, which is almost never, despite the candles.

Leviathan?  No, God.  I trusted all of it.  Now I drink my coffee cold.

No signpost, but this wind tells me of a road that leads to a different country.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani

DAY 154

“What is Home Quarantine? This is the voluntary “home isolation” of individuals, without signs and symptoms, who came from COVID-affected countries for the past 14 days.” —Bureau of Quarantine, Philippine Department of Health

fresh laundry hanged to dry
i hunger for the bed
dreaming to roll
with anne lamott
newly bought
steal a moment
but the floor beckons
some tables too
with dirty diapers
red ants feasting
on a drop of mango shake
sordid smell
i must begin in the toilet
as always from the corners
zooming out into the porch
the dirt and mess impatient
and by the time
this madness is quenched
the bed and the book
are but leftovers saved
for tomorrow’s cravings
perhaps will satisfy
or perhaps fed to the wind
as rest is savaged by demons
but grace is there
as the book and the bed
remain
still
waiting

Issue 69 Contributors

Sloan Asakura is a poet and memoirist originally from Los Angeles, now braving the Pacific Northwest. In their freetime, they can be found cooking comfort food, doing critical analyses of Korean dramas, and obsessively cleaning their bathroom. Asakura has previously been published in Rigorous and Jeopardy Magazine.

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, HeadStuff, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of the Other was published in 2020 with Dos Madres Press. She is the Translation/International Poetry Editor of The Blue Nib.

Jessica Covil is a PhD Candidate in English at Duke, pursuing graduate certificates in African & African American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies. Broadly, her poems explore family, sisterhood, trauma, hope, and politics. Her work has appeared in SWWIM Every Day, What Rough Beast, Whale Road Review, Rise Up Review, The Maynard, Oye Drum, One Hand Clapping, Survivor Lit, Last Leaves Magazine, and Madness Muse Press.

Pietra Dunmore writes poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. Her writing has appeared in Penumbra Online, Causeway Lit, Pine Hills Review, The Intersection, Rigorous, Hippocampus Magazine, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets. Her website is: www.pietradunmore.net.

Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including Hobart, Berfrois, Queen Mob's Teahouse, The Rialto, Barren, SWWIM, Diode, Glass, Aotearotica and The Spinoff. Her website is: www.paulaharris.co.nz.

Veronica Kornberg is a poet from Northern California. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, New Ohio Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Guard, #PoetsResist (Glass), Mom Egg Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Swwim Every Day, and Meridian, among other journals. Find her on the web at veronicakornberg.com.   

Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English and has a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. She is the author of the chapbook The Bird Happened, and the forth-coming chapbook perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Ethel Zine, Poet head, The Wax Paper, The Phare, West Trade Review, The Open Page Literary Journal, and Slipstream, among others.

Catherine Rockwood is a poet and independent scholar based in MA. Poems in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Rust + Moth, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Essays and reviews in Strange Horizons, Rain Taxi, Mom Egg Review, and Tin House.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani has authored Letters from Libya, a chapbook of short memoirs about her family’s escape from the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014. Her poems have recently appeared in Your Dream Journal, Global Poemic, Luna Luna, Fahmidan, 433 Magazine, and forthcoming in All Female Menu, Cicada Magazine, and Agapanthus Collective. In 2018, she successfully defended her PhD dissertation on flow psychological theory in creative writing pedagogy. In between gardening and yoga, she teaches humanities at the high school level in the Philippines. She is currently working on a chapbook of poems on spirituality and the body. You can find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noeme.g.c.tabor.

J. Walsh is the author of two books, most recently The List of Last Tries, and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Cotton Xenomorph, Tinderbox, Stirring, and more. She teaches at a community college in suburban Chicago. See more at jessicalwalsh.com.