RogueAgent

ISSUE 54
CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER 2019


Cameron Morse
Leslie Contreras-Schwartz
Gracy Boes
Jessi McKellar
Dante Novario
INTERVIEW: Emily Michael
Tim McCoy
Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose
Dené Dryden
Jennifer Jackson Berry
Jeannine Hall Gailey

CONTRIBUTORS

Cameron Morse

CHIEFS CAP

I wear the defeated ballcap
on my dented head. The Chiefs
won the one and only game I’ve ever been to
in 2014 when my jowls dangled
with steroidal blubber. They had such a big lead
we felt safe leaving early
ahead of the masses. That’s the thing
about the Chiefs, it’s how much they win
that sets you up for more greatly disappointing losses.
Still, the hat Ed bought me at the game
remains the best I own. These five years
since chemo and radiation, I’ve had hats fade
and flop. My theory is the shorter,
snub-nosed bill of my Chiefs cap has helped it
retain the shape of my head. Its silver clasp
still secures the leather strap. Its black
is still black. Its red is still red.

Leslie Contreras-Schwartz

WHO SPEAKS FOR US HERE?

I.

We’ve all cracked

in our own ways, are expected to add
to this circle-time story
our own trace of a hairline split

that turned rift
then cut, split into

body-sized hole.
Everybody here with a last-ditch

story that locked us
together, shuffling

room to room, both cold,
heads nodding from meds

that could drone a horse
half-living.

What’s your story, Vi?
Nadia juts her sharp chin to me.

Was that a dare? I’ve got
nothing to match her fable

of the sharp little pill, the hard
lump of bread

those violent invaders
forced down her throat

into her holy stomach,
her empty sanctuary.

She lifts a hand—claw to face
splendid as a miniature
plant in pale down-  

feathered lanugo flourishing
on the hard shoot of her arm. 

How do I say that we are hungry,
down here, from the bottom of my throat

the lowest hung
branch of myself?

II.

I took the pill that set
every sound to fade

and barely there, but song still
floats to me, as if the entire 

choir plays in my underwaters
subterrestrial hymn, dark cave canticle. 

But I have nowhere to point
Nor any direction to give, no language—

Even the man who can’t stop
fucking every woman, man, and child

points one way or another,
a beast incarnate, between his legs.

Look: I’ve an assembly of people—
a mindscape of a sun-darkened girl
on the beach aggressive motion,
snapshot of childhood,

wide holler.

III.

The librarian, meticulous recorder
of his own dark findings, each head

slammed against the wall categorized
and set to forever. [He sees and remembers all for me.]

The Woman Who Fights, goes about with butcher knife-
baroque in blood and rags.

The girl, mute and comatose, frozen animal
made of fear and sick grief.

The lady hums
nursing and feeding

 tiny sips of water
from a straw to each of them.

All of them
Also humming.

Their bright braided
song into my throat—

I’d been learning to sing
or to hum a little with them

but the melody kept escaping—
How did you find yourself here?

the interventionist counselor asks
as she’s asked the other patients—

a man with gauze on his neck heavy
with fresh blood, the girl in long sleeves

pulled down across her fingers,
fresh cuts poking out from her neckline.

My roommate an older lady retching
into a trash bin,

the rank vodka smell
she carried with her like sadness from room to room.

I was learning to sing,
I hear myself
saying. I was just learning
to sing and I couldn’t keep up
the melody—

but the circle wants
a story’s straight line
to this mental hospital to this room that smells of Clorox and old blood.

You are supposed to say, I wanted to die
so A then B and now C and all of D.

IV.

I had just begun to want to live: A
I let them speak,

a life could be sung
louder, a wide-open mouth

un-same-same and death: B

instead hummingbird life
full-belly dirge, beak bent to nectar

neck bent to loosened sap.
I open my mouth: warble chorale. I hold up my wrists: C. 

My people started chanting.
this aria,
terrible and beautiful, raggedy,

inner bellow and hiss
cut up sound, bells of self

a sieve or a map
to a place no one wanted to know: D.

V.

A song that everyone wanted to stop—
everyone, everything,

but me. Here are my wrists.
Isn’t this how we talk here?

Show them the wounds
we don’t remember making,

the bottom half of an inning
when everyone is cheering

wildly, all the hollering the crowd
can muster, and they don’t remember why

or who it is that’s running
full steam to base.

Jessi McKellar

EFFEXOR

Face down in a pool of you,
I filled my lungs with stained
glass and glue. Hold hold hold
still:
your breath.

Jealous of the flies and fish
who die while no one looks on, I
try to suck the ink out of existence
but end up with blackened teeth and
a headache.  

I tried for you, filling silence with
a dried-out marker, following the
lines I didn’t believe in yet.

Finding comfort in merely being,
searching for unlocked closets to hang
my soggy brain out to dry like
dying flowers from a gas station
cheap sentimental somethings that
whisper at my muted ears—

I fell harder inside myself,
continued to crouch in the fog of my ribcage while
such soft hands held my head down
under the covers:
I love you, you know that,
right?

Dante Novario

PERPETUAL STEW

I threw in some potatoes. Garlic for taste. A dash
Of denial, simmer. I’ll unload the trauma
Of eating disorders later, dry heave, I’m not
Hungry anyway. I threw in my first brush with death - gold
Fish - how easy that was compared
To the rest. Carrots. Tears for salt.
Then no tears. I wanted something bitter
To induce a vomit, gag, throw
The spoon across the room. Poppy seed,
A pinch of basil, sautee the bouquet of eyelashes
ripped from my body, wishes no longer included.
Warm marshmallows, my first s’more, I can almost
Remember the taste. Bile.
Blood. The hot sweat of a dying afternoon
When I first realized I wanted to taste no more.
Foam bubbles cascading over the edge
Making a mess of it.
Pills so colorful and so plain
I’ll digest them through my nose.
Shoe polish, foulard ties stuck clogging
My airway, I’ll cram as much money in
As my little mouth can take.
Mirror shards, plain white flour, I baked
A cake and stared at it
for an hour. Sucked on my sore until it
Turned into wound into scar,
Tasted good too.
I’ll savor the lies trapped in my
Hell’s mouth, lick my teeth and cut
My tongue on the edge of them. Smoke and
Smoke until I no longer feel the sensation.
I’ll trade it for rain, for every last sting of sunshine
Stir and stir till my fingernails
Checker, til i can swim in there, find scrumptious
Bread and wine, see the wind
Blowing the tides of this stew back
To the island of my stomach rumbling
Always rumbling.

Emily K. Michael talks about embodied poetry
and writing Neoteny

Please describe your journey toward writing poetry that reflects on the experience of living in the body. Have you always written this way, or did you come to it over time?

Like most poets, I started out writing sappy or obscure love poems, but as I read more poetry, I began tuning in to the power of language. I liked the “noisy poets” – the poets who used lots of sound devices to make their work sharp or musical.

I thought of myself as an embodied poet, but I never realized how much I was holding back until taking a course on poetry and the body through Poetry Barn. When the exercises asked me to focus on my body, I realized how hesitant I had been to talk about myself in such a personal way. Being an embodied poet takes bravery because your own body is appearing on the page. Though I may not be the speaker in every poem, I am inviting my body into the lines, and to do that, I have to confront every insecurity I’ve ever faced.

Being a blind woman in a visual world is difficult: I receive so much advice and feedback on my body that I have never asked for. Someone can see and judge me at a glance, but I don’t have the ability to perform the same kinds of judgments. So in writing embodied poetry, I must shut out the voices that have critiqued my posture, my shape, my dark glasses — unless the poem itself is directly resisting these critiques.

A lot of the narrative poetry I read makes visual imagery the primary method of communicating the experience of the poem to the reader. However, Neoteny is uniquely filled with rich language that invites all the senses to participate. To what extent has blindness figured into your choices of sense details?

My sensory preferences come from my love of food and music. I love to cook and eat wonderful food. The smells, sounds, and textures of food and food-preparation are so fun to play with in poetry. I often refuse to buy pre-cut vegetables because I enjoy the experience of feeling the vegetables and the weight of the knife as I chop. Sensations like crushing garlic, crumbling goat cheese, and juicing lemons just thrill me. I want to capture all those wonderful textures and movements in my work. I always loved chemistry in high school, but none of the lab equipment was accessible to me. I think I’ve transferred that enthusiasm for mixing and combining into the kitchen and onto the page.  

I also love singing and listening to music, especially classical music. So many of the sounds, rhythms, and textures in my poems come from musical experiences. I am always exploring how music and language relate, how language can represent musical sensations. Can I write a poem where the speaker is the central note in a chord? Can I write a poem that uses the polyphony of Baroque concertos? Can I write a poem where the cantos work like symphonic movements? These are all fascinating questions to me!

My favorite poem in your collection has to be “Faith.” As a blind person, I strongly identify with the sentiment expressed by the speaker at the end of the poem, “We tell [the story] because the man hushed the crowd and asked what was needed.” What does this poem have to say about able-bodied people’s ideas of help and the act of helping?

“Faith” comes from Matthew 20: 30-34, where two blind men call to Jesus from the side of the road. I imagine they are beggars because blind people had few opportunities in Jesus’s time. The men hail Jesus as Son of David, which shows that they know who he really is – a remarkable fact since many in his own time refused to recognize him as the Messiah. The verses go on to say that the crowd rebukes the blind men, but Jesus calls to them. He asks them what he can do for them, they ask for their sight, and he restores it.

When I encountered this passage in my personal Bible study, I was completely blown away. I had grown up with Bible stories and I knew that Jesus often healed disabled people. But I had never noticed how Jesus takes the time to honor these men’s concerns, to hear them out. I realized that Jesus is modeling empathy and inclusion for disabled people 2000 years before the ADA. What’s more, he is restoring these blind men to their community: in healing them, he makes a way for them to participate in Jewish life.

I wrote “Faith” because I needed to show that listening comes before healing. In the poem, there are two scenes that show people doing what they think is best for the blind. The first stanza features people participating in a disability simulation so they can learn how the blind manage their daily lives, and we blind people know just how frustrating these exercises can be. The second stanza brings in the most popular Christian message as the faith healer preaches. But as the poems says, he comes with “tiny Bibles” – no empathy for the blind speakers’ current position. As with all the faith healers who have approached me, the preacher in the second stanza sees the blind speakers as automatically defective. Blindness must indicate a lack of faith, even though in the Gospel accounts, Jesus always acknowledges the faith of blind people who ask for healing.

The third stanza shows the real miracle Jesus performed in the Gospels. He heard disabled people and honored their requests. Why did it take us 2000 years to notice such remarkable behavior?

FAITH

Dan and I lounged under an olive tree and laughed
      as the blindfolded do-gooders tried to pour dried beans
into red plastic cups without spilling. “This is hard!”
      came the wail over tuneful pinging — 
cold beans against the card table.

Dan and I lounged under an olive tree and sighed
      as the loud man came rushing toward us with the promise
of sight — “Just believe!” And all our blind sorrows would wipe clean.
He had a briefcase stuffed with tiny Bibles. Nothing
      in braille or large print —

Dan and I lounged under an olive tree and remembered
      that first time two like us waited by the road
to call for a good man. Others tell that story
      for the sleeping vision that broke bud — 
      the restored sense that always takes precedence.
We tell it because the man hushed the crowd
      and asked what was needed.

“Faith” is forthcoming in Nine Mile Magazine, vol 7, no. 1, 2019.

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

•   Writing and Workshopping Poetry: A Constructivist Introduction by Stephen Guppy
•   Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
•   The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon
•   Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey by Stephen Kuusisto
•   The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World  by Peter Wohlleben
•   The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King
•   The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
•   Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More – Poet, Reformer, Activist by Karen Swallow Prior

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 toward writing poetry that features the body?

Be honest. Be unafraid. Find a feeling or an experience you want the reader to have and build it from the ground up. Don’t listen to the whispering critics in your head. They are not invited to your poem. The people who called you fat, short, dorky, stupid – they aren’t writing poems. They wasted their words in middle school and high school and never learned any more.

And do not be afraid of joyful poems. People often think poets must be sad or angry. If you have joy, write it. We all need it.  

Tim McCoy

BARKER

as of hemlock i had drunk
as of hemlock
as of hemlock
i
had drunk
as of
as of

what might have been
necessary
white flower i might have ignored
romantic plain i might not have trod in blistering sun to pant and choke
white that might have remained extinguished
in an interior white
winter
white flower i might not have mortored and pestled
and drunk

i can’t blame the witches
in me
i seated beauty on my knees and found
emojis and fell through ground
to my own holy
brand I can now promote
like/dislike
and so to conquer
poison with poison
don’t i love you silicon valley
don’t i love you
right now
america

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

TO SENATOR HELLER, FROM A LITTLE HICCUP

"We got a little hiccup here with the Kavanaugh nomination.”
—Senator Dean Heller

I write to correct a case
of mistaken identity,
improper attribution
and ask you to kindly refrain
from using my name.

Look, I get it.
Easy mistake, my nom de plume
hailing from the Latin “to sob”
or “to gasp”

 and admittedly, I too can compel
the closure of vocal chords

and am likewise characterized by the frequency
with which I occur, symptomatic of a problem
arising from the gut (easily confused
for a dark underbelly)

Yes, the remedies touted to rein us in are the same:
Don’t drink. Avoid tight clothing.
Hold your breath.
Hold your tongue.

Human nature to confuse
two things for one
(cause with correlation
her rights, his privilege
No. Yes.)

But the difference is clear:

Hiccups go away.
Rapists go to Washington.

Dené Dryden

THERE ARE GHOSTS

there are ghosts in my fingers.
they really want to play piano.
manual dialects I used to know —
how the tendons stretch, the
supple touch of cold keys, gentle
presses on a beginner’s lullaby.
the ghosts riveted in my bones
at the hollow bench at home,
fingering scales over and over
until I didn’t want it anymore.
a teacher whose name is a ghost
but her color was blue —
she scolded me between songs,
she cried, too. I know nursing
homes, the pink practice book,
five lines two staffs seven note
names eighty-eight keys Good
Boys Deserve Fudge, F-A-C-E.
phantoms irk knuckles to bend,
grasping the tube of a clarinet
but the ghosts want percussion,
they are greedy. they want more
than woodwind language: the
ASL alphabet, the floor inverted
as I stand on my palms, the grasp
of my mother’s hand always. but
there’s no place for them to go.

Jennifer Jackson Berry

SOMETIMES WHEN OUR CURVES FIT SEAMLESS YOU WHISPER

sometimes when our curves fit seamless you
whisper i could sleep like this meaning you’re
satisfied meaning you’re mine meaning you could
die like this
meaning die like this & be happy meaning i could  
die like this meaning nightly against your body
meaning our bellies are the softest pillows in the
house

Jeannine Hall Gailey

TODAY, ROSE GOLD

I water my flowers. I bought a rose-gold jacket,
shining as my hopes, to cover my body,

which limps along, barely able to lift the water
for these flowers. My shoes shine rose-gold too,

little toes that barely feel the sunlight, the grass,
anymore. I painted my hair pink with a ferocity

that might surprise you. I can control some things.
I can still water these flowers, I can still color my hair

and pick out clothes, those decisions small enough
for my damaged brain to handle. I don’t have control

about the meds they pump into me via IV,
or how long I stay in the hospital. I can be stubborn,

twirl for the doctors, show them my shiny shoes.
In the yard, the garden blooms hideously bright,

as grotesque in its flagrant fertility, the way
the short lifespans of cherry trees, or lilies, or lilacs,

are forgotten, the way they strew the ground
with their obvious pink evidence of life, life, life.

Issue 54 Contributors

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose is a poet and humorist whose writing tends to focus on themes of feminist resistance. Nominated for two Pushcarts and a Best of the Net award, her work can be found in places like McSweeney's, The Atlantic, The Belladonna, Feminist Formations, Women Studies Quarterly, Room, Mom Egg Review, and many others. She teaches writing as healing at the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, NY, where she is the co-founder of Straw Mat Writers http://strawmatwriters.weebly.com. Find her on Twitter @libbyjohnston74.

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.

Gracy Boes is a recent college graduate with a degree in creative writing from North Central University in Minneapolis, MN. Her work appeared twice in their literary magazine, The Wineskin. Post-grad she is staying in the Twin Cities frantically seeking a purpose that will also pay the bills. When she isn't working or writing you can find her napping, playing D&D, or playing little ditties on her purple ukulele.

Dené Dryden is a creative writing student at Kansas State University who would quite love a job as a science, technology and/or health reporter after her May 2020 graduation. In addition to her journalistic work, Dené's poetry is also featured in Lammergeier and forthcoming in the 2019 Flint Hills Review.

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World,Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA's Elgin Award. Her work appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. Her website is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

Tim McCoy holds an MFA from Syracuse University, and has had pieces published in Interim, Ekphrasis, Stone Canoe, and other places. He toils in the composition mines at two different colleges in the Syracuse area.

Jessi McKellar holds a BFA with a double major in Creative Writing and Gender & Women's Studies from Western Michigan University. She has published work in The Laureate. She currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI with her partner and their cat and dog.

Emily K. Michael’s work centers on ecology, disability, and music. She develops grammar workshops for multilingual learners and delivers poetry workshops for writers at all levels. She regularly reads at Jax By Jax, a yearly literary festival celebrating Jacksonville writers. Emily is passionate about grammar, singing, birding, and guide dogs. Find more of her work at http://emilykmichael.com.

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri.His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His subsequent collections are Father Me Again (Spartan Press, 2018), Coming Home with Cancer (Blue Lyra Press, 2019) and Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.

Dante Novario currently lives in Louisville, KY and works as a behavior therapist with special needs individuals. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Dream Pop Journal and The Ariel Magazine. He previously studied writing at Bellarmine University and can be reached at dnovario01@gmail.com.

Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the fourth Houston Poet Laureate, serving from 2019-2021. She is a multi-genre writer whose book Nightbloom & Cenote (St. Julian Press, May 2018), was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She is also the author of Fuego, and was a featured poet for the 2018 Houston Poetry Fest. Her forthcoming book, Who Speaks for Us?, is scheduled for spring 2020 publication with Skull + Wind Press. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, The Collagist, [PANK], Iowa Review, Verse Daily, Catapult, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. She is a graduate of The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and earned a bachelor's at Rice University.