IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This image is grounded in two overlapping dark backgrounds: bare branches covered in Christmas lights and a view down the center of a commercial street. Since both pictures were taken at night, viewers get the impression of a dark background dotted with points of white light. The foreground includes an archway that is colored gold and adorned with paisley-shaped lanterns, several painted blotches of color, a pair of white hands pressed against an invisible barrier, and an area map with large visible waterways. The only words are IN/S/ER/T in large letters cut from magazines and “silence” in much smaller type. The word “silence” is circled in yellow and framed by a pair of hands posed to simulate toothy jaws. By happy accident, this is American Sign Language for alligator.
a journal for work that inhabits the body
Editor's Note
A body is the most genuine thing we have. A body can burst forth into a magic-realist galaxy. A body can be a source of pleasure. Pain can be a muse. Where does psychic pain end and visceral pain begin?
When I say sensuality, does that connote pain or pleasure? Writing the body is writing what we know because we inhabit it. Or you might write your lover's body so you can keep it with you.
If I say I am holding your hand right now can you feel it? Do you feel it with your brain or your skin?
Our bodies can make us feel powerful or defenseless. Taking a risk to write about the body can make you feel powerful.
When I wake and put my feet on the floor I feel defenseless. I would like to reclaim the word sensitive to mean risk-taker.
We are gods of our own bodies. We are servants to our own bodies. Our bodies are signifiers. Our bodies are false signifiers. Our bodies are liars. Our bodies are truthtellers.
If our bodies are oppressed by an outside force, we are "written over." Rogue Agent wants to dismantle oppression. Rogue Agent wants to empower the body’s truth. Share your stories about the poem that is the body.
Jill Khoury
Masthead
Jill Khoury - EDITOR IN CHIEF
Jill Khoury is interested in the intersection of poetry, visual art, representations of gender, and disability. She is a Western Pennsylvania Writing Project fellow and teaches workshops focusing on writing the body. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Copper Nickel, Bone Bouquet, Lunch Ticket, and diode. She has written two chapbooks—Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House, 2009) and Chance Operations (Paper Nautilus, 2016). Her debut full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, was released in 2016 from Sundress Publications. Find her on the web at jillkhoury.com.
Jen Stein Hauptmann - Assitant Editor
Jen Stein is a feminist writer, artist, advocate, mother, and finder of lost things in Fairfax, Virginia. Her art and writing are informed by her experiences with advocacy and activism surrounding the politics of the body, disability, and mental health. She has published and upcoming work with Porkbelly Press, Whale Road Review, Menacing Hedge, Nonbinary Review, and Stirring, and has been assistant editor at Rogue Agent for seven years. You can find her on Instagram @jensteinpoetry, and on Twitter @dexlira.
KATE CHAMPLIN—ACCESSIBILITY CONSULTANT
Kate Champlin is a writing tutor, curriculum developer, and copyeditor. She holds a PhD. in contemporary literature from Ball State University and currently resides in Elkhart, Indiana. She is interested in gender, the class system, and disability, and she's especially interested in how these hierarchies or ways of being appear in speculative fiction.
What is it like to live in your body? We want work that answers this question.
Submission Guidelines
POETRY
We want your skin, your liver, your islets of Langerhans. We want your joy and your frustration. We want to be surprised by your elegance and stunned by your forthrightness. We want to be impressed with your craft and your commitment. We are much less impressed with grand proclamations than we are by specific vulnerability. To submit:
- Email up to 5 poems (no more than 10 pages) to rogueagentjournalATgmailDOTcom.
- Make your email subject [FIRST INITIAL] [LAST NAME] POETRY SUBMISSION.
- Submit all poems together in one DOC, DOCX, or RTF file.
- Do not submit PDF files. We will reject any PDF submissions as they are not accessible for the blind and visually impaired.
- If your poem has extremely specialized formatting, send it in one of our accepted file types and make a note in your cover letter that there's specialized formatting for a specific poem so we can ask you for a JPG of the poem if it is accepted.
- In the body of the email, include a cover letter with a short (50 - 75 words) bio and your contact information, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you would like us to tag you.
- Do not submit poetry and artwork in the same email. If you are submitting both, send them separately.
Rogue Agent strives to publish a range of poetic styles and forms. The most important things we consider are craft and how well the work fits the theme of our journal.
Rogue Agent is published monthly with ten poets, one poem apiece.
To get a feel for our journal's theme, we invite you to explore over 80 previous issues, and also the work we have linked to in our section entitled For Inspiration.
PLEASE NOTE:
Due to an increase in the volume of submissions, we request that you do not submit to Rogue Agent more than twice in one calendar year.
Do not send your poems pasted into the body of your email.
Do not send a second submission if your first submission is still under consideration.
We consider submissions in one genre at a time.
We read year round. Response time is 1-3 months. Please do not query before 3 months have elapsed.
If your submission is rejected, please wait at least 2 months before re-submitting.
If your work is accepted, please wait 4 months before submitting again.
We do not consider poems that have already been published.
We consider collaborative work. Please provide bios and contact info for both authors in your cover letter.
Translations are considered collaborative work. Please provide bios and contact info for both the author and the translator in your cover letter.
Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you notify us immediately which poem has been accepted elsewhere.
At this time, we only consider poetry for publication in Rogue Agent, and we can only pay you in love.
If you agree to publish with Rogue Agent, you grant us first serial rights. You also grant us rights to archive all accepted work on our site, and through media closely associated with our site, including social media. All other rights remain with the author. If your work is published in another collection after its publication here, you should acknowledge Rogue Agent as being the venue in which it first appeared.
Rogue Agent is listed at Duotrope! Please report your submissions and response times by clicking on the button to the right.
artwork
We feature the work of artists who investigate the same question as our poetry: what is it like to live in the body? To that end, we very much want you to submit your illustrations, photographs, collages, paintings, digital art, or video (please link to YouTube or Vimeo; do not send the video file), a bio (approximately 75 words) and an artist statement that clearly describes how your artwork is a fit for our journal: how does it answer the question “what is it like to live in your body?” While we cannot offer you monetary compensation at this time, we can provide you with a wider audience for your work, with a link to your website, Tumblr, or blog in your bio. To show us your artwork that captures the embodied experience:
- Email 3 - 5 high-resolution JPGs to rogueagentjournalATgmailDOTcom.
- Make your email subject [FIRST INITIAL] [LAST NAME] ART SUBMISSION.
- In the body of the email, include a cover letter with the title of each image, an artist's statement about your project, a short (50-75 words) bio, a link to your artist's website, and your contact information, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you would like us to tag you.
- You must include the artist's statement for us to consider your work.
- Do not submit poetry and artwork in the same email. If you are submitting both, send them separately.
Rogue Agent is proud...
to be affiliated with the Sundress Publications family. If you haven't already, visit the Sundress website to learn more.
Be Inspired...
Rogue Agent admires these fine poems and invites you to be inspired by them! The number of poems and poets whose work seeks out the various truths of the body is too long to list, and we hope to rotate our list from time to time. Check back occasionally for more inspiration!
"Warning"
Franny Choi
PANK
"Somatic Poetry Exercise and Poem"
CA Conrad
jubilat
"Manifest Destiny"
Jim Ferris
Disability Studies Quarterly
"Honey"
Arielle Greenberg
Academy of American Poets
"How to Draw a Perfect Circle"
Terrance Hayes
Poetry
"Failed Haiku"
Brett Elizabeth Jenkins
Thrush
"Boy in Whalebone Corset"
Saeed Jones
Connotation Press
"What Lonely Won't Say"
Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan
MUZZLE
"Articulation Points"
Sylvia Legris
webConjunctions
"Torn"
Kelly McQuain
Kin
"The Dead Girls Speak in Unison"
Danielle Pafunda
Kenyon Review
"For Hulk Hogan, Who, By His Own Reasonable Estimate,
Has the Largest Arms in the World"
Paul Arrand Rogers
BOAAT
"The Body Is Not an Apology"
Sonya Renee Taylor
(video from Verses and Flow)
"What I Know for Sure"
Alexandra Teague
32 Poems