RogueAgent

ISSUE 77
CONTENTS

AUGUST 2021

Brittney Corrigan
Juliet Cook
Mary Biddinger
Andreas Fleps
Martins Deep
ART: Sally Brown
Nancy Huxtable Mohr
Kara Lewis
Lindsay Miller
Noël Bella Merriam
Audrey Gidman

CONTRIBUTORS

Brittney Corrigan

AGE OLD

In my waning gibbous face, as the wrinkles take hold
of my skin, I think of the frilled shark—living fossil—

collar of gills beneath its jaws, throat a scaffold
of fringe, trident-toothed, slender body in the deep.

My mouth, teeth still my own, but at the threshold
of my lips, just a hint of tortoise-pucker, fine furrows 

on the wizened upper rim. And oh, the roothold
of expressions: laugh lines, frown lines, crow’s feet 

that recall prehistoric kin. Soon, when gravitational folds
sag where my body loved the sun, I will praise elephants:

their bodies gentle and fierce, pleats and creases manifold
and much-caressed. And here at my forehead, where curls

are silvering, I thrill and wish for them a thousandfold—
loops of white, whorls of grey—immortal jellyfish 

of luminous tendrils that my fingers twine and enfold,
press to my palm: life line, fate line, heart line, mount of moon.

Juliet Cook

MY TEETH HAVE BEEN LOOSE FOR YEARS

The lineup of blood
drenched animal crackers
is hiding deep down underneath
so many tiny broken beds.

Scared little girls can only gain control
if they turn into different creatures
if they bite off the heads and spit.

Every single night that raggedy doll tried to teach
another horrific lesson
about restraint and lying
as still as I possibly could.

I wanted to turn that doll's head around
and snap it before it crawled from my midriff
up to my pillowcase, attempting to
smother me into demolition.

It dressed like a bloody tooth fairy.
It wanted to knock me out, remove my teeth
with a pickaxe, sell them at the black market.

If this is another recurring bad dream,
then where does it come from?
Why won't the inside of my head stop
screaming as I choke on my own baby teeth?

I wretch out another black macaroon,
see it float to the top of the ceiling fan,
then dive back down and splinter another bed stand.
Heavily whipped mold festers in every corner of this room.

Mary Biddinger

SUDAFED AND GIN

Listen, I’m falling apart but it was worth it
like eating lunch too fast because you’re walking,
or lurching on the deck of a novelty paddle-wheeler
you wanted to exit the moment they pushed off.
These days I’m mostly dry shampoo and concealer
but at least both are effective. Nobody’s asking
for my identification but here it is, and the cashier
wears a hoodie with a red polar bear dabbing,
and I’ve run over both of my feet with the cart yet
in separate collisions. I’m mealy but at least
that’s still a meal, it could be worse, grad school
when we’d get wrecked on Sudafed and gin.
Sorry, but I do wish I had more photos from back
then, and not just the PVC jumpsuit or halter
built of metal loops. You won’t believe this but
I never thought about the future much. Lost
four or so years down the hole of a blood-mouth
mistaken for a lake. I was dreaming of a man who
ran relatively clean, like a lawnmower engine.

Andreas Fleps

LET DOWN YOUR HAIR

I’ve grown my hair out for over a year now—
the longest since middle school—when I didn’t

know how to tend to it—so it was a tangled mess,
just as my whole body is now. I came out of my

mother’s womb with my hand on my head.
Maybe my brain was already too heavy. 

Maybe my body language already expressed, “Holy shit!”
I used to pet myself as I sipped from a sippy cup,

my version of a pat on the back—there, there,
everything will be alright. I still have the habit

of running my fingers through my hair, but it’s
to remind me there’s something silky right above

all these loutish and pugnacious thoughts, and the long
curls sing of possible languid curves in the road ahead.

Miles upon miles have grown out of me, and miles are
still left inside of me. Cutting is a part of the story.

Regrowing is a part of the story, too. When I scratch
my head in confusion, I remember to twirl a curl until

it’s a tornado to prove a finger can untwine a catastrophe.
Sometimes I do not put any product in my hair and it

frizzes electric, so I can look in the mirror and know I’ve
endured being struck by Zeus. Sometimes I let it be a

messy mop because I am a tool with the capacity to clean
another’s life—hold their dirt closely to my heart for a while.

This time, it will be the boy who grows his hair out, and lets
it out the window, to climb back into himself after he decided

to jump.

Martins Deep

A PLEA TOWARDS HEALING

After chemo, i'll kiss & kiss this scab on my shin,
till it opens, to reveal

the ovule in the wound. I'll kiss the ovule,
pollen of birdsong studded on my lips.

I'll let the trail of red float me 
to the place Jacob wrestled with an angel. 

"Touch my hands," i'll ask of him

"Touch my hands till, like petals, they open
to drink firstlight."

"Make of this wound a larva
where i'll be reborn, blooming aubades
in my mouth"

Sally Brown

TRIBUTE TO MOTHER EARTH 4

TRIBUTE TO MOTHER EARTH 5

TRIBUTE TO BRIGMAN I BELONG

TRIBUTE TO GREEN

BOTANICAL TRIBUTE 3

BOTANICAL TRIBUTE 4

BOTANICAL TRIBUTE 7

PROCESS

Artist statement:

Inspired by Yves Klein’s Anthropometries (1960), I create body prints alternatively with feminist intent, as director, artist and model, each dedicated to a woman artist in abstract, expressive forms reminiscent of inkblot tests. Using my body, my work initiates conversations on gender and body image, as well as my role as mother. I recognize similar inquiries [cries] from other (women) artists and that my frustrations and expressions are not unique. I developed this series of tributes to Mother Earth, with the physicality and femininity of including flowers and leaves, to honor, admire and reflect on women's role in the cycle of life. “Mother” also references my role as mom, as I work through my ever changing body, perspective, world around me.

Nancy Huxtable Mohr

SUBURBAN WOMAN LOSES TWO BREASTS IN RAINSTORM

Through a gauze of rain outside
my hospital window, disordered
flocks of crows fly so close
their mottled wings graze the pane. 

I number wingbeats as prayers,
lay still, recall the ripple movement
of my outermost branches against
the pasture slope. A dread. A blood-beat.    

White drip bags, machines, a mass
of raw tendrils on my empty chest.
My hand translates a long scar. Breasts                         
gone like birds on their earth-journeys.

Now, a demolition of male gaze. First, terror
of a kind but slowly waves of gratitude.
No more attempts to manipulate my life
to disaster. Instead, a livingness in the instant.

Nerve filaments twitch with discovery.
I ask for enough grace to be patient, to know
this storm will be followed by another
and another until I imagine mercy.

Kara Lewis

EROTICA FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Spanked by fate, I slink through days
swathed in leather, unicorn slippers, and your basketball shorts.

I put my hair in pigtails to feel young, waiting
for your tug, or begging 

for the butterfly clips in my bangs to fly us away—
but the part down my skull aches like a lesson

in separation. The day a BuzzFeed quiz tells me, You’ll have sex 0 times in 2020,
I buzz my roommate’s head in the sink. I’m scared 

to shave mine, because you never know a cranium’s veins
until it hovers bare, bright

as a new universe. I retweet, Burn down this country
and build from its ashes, but I know I’d send you ads for suction vibrators

and crystal butt plugs while everything incinerates
somewhere off-screen. In the thesaurus of sexting, I find penis: the need 

to feel full / safe word: syllables your exhale can hold /
bondage: the kind of embrace that makes you gasp like you’re coming 

back to life. I fill my head with smut and astrology.
The apocalypse will be low-brow

and carnal. My horoscope reads, Venus is in your fourth house of home
and emotions, so I wear a harness while pruning succulents,

cry into my pillow’s feathered chest, examine each apple
for a soft, hand-shaped bruise.

We get naked on Skype, despite
our mismatched zodiac signs, and I moan your name like for once

I don’t need to know the future.
After, I just want to make you eggs,

like a sunrise is something I can serve up
anytime we want it.

Lindsay Miller

EXTRA

Did you know
not everyone is born
with this one tendon
on the underside
of our forearms?
It means that part of
our body is superfluous
like an appendix
or nipples on a man
who won’t let you
touch them.

I turn my arm over.
Flex it, discover I have
all the tendons intact
like my body wanted
to prepare for any eventuality
so when I clutch something
in the heart of my palm
maybe the odds I can hold
it there improve, so when I
examine myself I feel assured
that no part is absent or mistaken.
I already have everything
I don’t need.

Noël Bella Merriam

OUT OF BODY

first time                      I was seven and it was a quiet night in the desert 
            that was when I learned to freeze                   don’t speak                 to survive
he broke into our home with a gun

the needle pulls the threads together daisy chain of interlocked stitches
looping lines form vines
like the honeysuckle growing in the forbidden garden
where we paused to sip the nectar

we left town so fast headed east                     I never had a chance to fully understand
we didn’t speak about it faint echoes later in my sisters’ silent screams

here is where I watched snow dancing delicate through the window
in the darkness silver light
cuts into a frozen river bare trees like people
with many hands

second time                 four years later a horrific accident
            how am I still alive                             the sight of so many stitches   when I bathe
sends me soaring towards the ceiling

sunlight skimming tall grass in texas
knitting earth to sky with jagged strings of fire
wind lifts long hair from the back of my neck I dance
in tiger lily dreams

third time                                eight years on I was so happy for a date with him
exploring city outskirts under dark stars        he takes without asking           I orbit loose above
a gun tucked under my head

the sun walks fast to the edges
of time lets the moon sing alone most nights
run your hand over the soft knots holding the bits together
celebrate their strength

reading a random magazine quiz        ten years after I see the question
have you been date raped                               at first I think no                     then realize yes
shocked ache of the unseen gun hard beneath my skull

the blanket is thin and ripped
in places worn from so many years of covering me
rain runs down the window glass as I contemplate
the task of mending

Audrey Gidman

[NO ONE HAD TOLD ME A HEARTBEAT]

No one had told me a heartbeat
could sound like deer walking—

ravens, red-
winged blackbird, crow
in the cedar grove—

behind me, skimming
over the snow.

Issue 77 Contributors

Mary Biddinger’s newest poetry collection, Department of Elegy, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in early 2022. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and NEOMFA program, and serves as poetry editor for the University of Akron Press. Learn more about her work at https://marybiddinger.com/.

Sally Brown is an artist, curator and writer currently based in Morgantown. Her artwork including drawing, painting and performance, explores womanhood, motherhood and the body. She has exhibited her work in spaces nationally and in the UK. She has won two awards for illustration for Intimates and Fools and Leaves of Absence, both with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Women's Art Journal and Artslant, among others. She has curated group shows in Omaha, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Morgantown. She holds a Bachelor of Arts-Studio Art, a Master of Public Administration and Master of Arts- Art History and Feminist Theory. She is a member of the College Art Association National Committee on Women in the Arts, edits the online journal Les Femmes Folles, and currently serves as Exhibits Coordinator for West Virginia University Libraries. Find her on the internet at sallyjanebrown.com .

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in a small multitude of print and online publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019), "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2020) and "Histrionics Inside my Interior City" (part of Ghost City Press's 2020 Summer Micro-Chapbook Series).

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Breaking, Navigation and 40 Weeks. Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture, is forthcoming from Airlie Press in September, 2021. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.

Martins Deep (he/him) is a budding African poet, photographer/artist, & currently a student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. His creative works have appeared on FIYAH, Barren Magazine, The Sandy River Review, Agbowó Magazine, Surburban Review, IceFloe Press, FERAL, Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World, Kalahari Review, & elsewhere. He loves jazz, adores Amanda Cook, and fantasizes reincarnating as an owl. He tweets @martinsdeep1 .

Andreas Fleps s a 29-year-old poet based near Chicago. He studied theology and philosophy at Dominican University, and his debut collection of poems entitled Well into the Night (via Energion Publications) was released at the end of 2020. Battling Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder since the age of five, he translates teardrops.

Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Luna Luna, SWWIM, Okay Donkey, The Inflectionist Review, Bear Review, Volume Poetry, Wax Nine, Juke Joint, perhappened, The Shore, The West Review and elsewhere. She serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gigantic Sequins and her chapbook, body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press. Twitter // @audreygidman

Kara Lewis is a poet, writer, and editor based in Kansas City, Missouri. Her poems have appeared in SWWIM, Pithead Chapel, Stirring, and elsewhere. She is a weekly contributor to the Read Poetry vertical, as well as a poetry reader for Longleaf Review.

Lindsay Miller is a writer and editor whose creative writing has been published in LA Weekly, Black Heart Magazine, Cleaver, Literary Orphans, and others. She lives and works in LA, most often with her dog Dean McQueen at her feet. "Extra" is her first published poem.

Noël Bella Merriam is a Latina artist and poet from San Antonio, Texas. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Two Hawks Quarterly, Plainsongs, Cloud Women’s Quarterly, Oye Drum, Pecan Grove Review, Cactus Alley, San Antonio Poetry Anthology, and Boundless 2021: The Anthology of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival. A finalist for the 2021 Saguaro Poetry Prize, she spent many years working as an artist and poet in residence across Texas.

Nancy Huxtable Mohr’s poetry has been published in numerous journals and she has published one book, The Well (Butternut Press 2018). She is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and California Teacher in the Schools. She has taught in K-12 private and public schools and the San Mateo County Women’s Jail. She has a B.S from Cornell University and a California State Teacher’s Credential as well as Independent Study at Stanford University’s Creative Writing Department. She resides in Northern California. Her work can be seen on her website: www.NancyHuxtableMohr.org.