RogueAgent

ISSUE 81
CONTENTS

DECEMBER 2021

Jen Karetnick
Francine Rubin
Nicole Hur
Lenna Jawdat
Ayrton Lopez
ART: Tamizh
Merie Kirby
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Ronda Piszk Broatch
Lisa Richter
Emily Unwin
Azure Arther

CONTRIBUTORS

Jen Karetnick

NOCTURNE WITH NEEDLE

Sewn to the backdrop of dusk, a shy smile of moon dangles
by tackings of clouds. A few stars dimple, appliqued as if by
hand. But never mind this amateurish set, designed to distract.

A king tide laps at the toes of healthcare givers, each wave like a
curtain spaced six feet apart. Only children breach the interstices.
I sometimes forget how we have come to this, it’s been that

long. Instead my ancestral memory throws up scenes of being sent
to the bread lines, the train lines, the bath lines. It says I am far too
close, even though I am hundreds away, to this experiment. I will offer

my arm anyway. A doctor once told me a needle should never enter
crooked, with a stabbing motion, but instead be leveled straight as a
face so that the muscle isn’t sore and deadened afterward. So much

hangs here in this wait time to embroider all kinds of links and chains
on my imagination. As each patient is disappeared behind a makeshift
screen, I plunge behind like an emptying syringe, skew-whiff, out of true.

Francine Rubin

BIRDS FALL

from my arms,
my breast, my face
tiny fluffy chicks
before i hold
them to the light
to search for one
that lives, i know
they are dead
i keep birthing
them from my will
my need for infant
cells that need me
but they keep falling
dead before they hit
the ground

Nicole Hur

SHELL

In the bathtub
she covers her body
still
      the swimsuit sucking
      her soft curves
in-case they find her
naked
          echoes of hot water
          running and steam
lifting

Lenna Jawdat

ODE TO THE PSOAS

Ayrton Lopez

BONE ORCHARD

I.

Everything goes into my wheelbarrow
at the bone orchard

Some are duplicates and others I have no use for
yet I tower them high

I am here to trade my baby teeth
for renewed Vitruvian marrow 

Rebuilding a body and seeking anything
that will grow as I do

Bones knock together like windchimes
until they are slathered smooth

A ripeness I never knew
My greed pirouettes into tightly nested circles

II.

Only monochromatic shades play at maximum volume here
Other colors are but husks

Muted and derivative in an alphabet of vinegary glyphs
Astral flecks of misconducted alchemy

Shadow and any sense of depth
scattered into hollowed heaviness

III.

Row after row of magnificent growth
planted so straight I wonder if this horizon even curves

or if it simply ends between calcified parapets
A framed cut-out of hardened sunlight between branches

With each step I discover a new sensitivity
Soil underfoot pills like a blanket

Seeds gleaming as they burrow into themselves
Cracked open only to return twice as strong

Admittedly not everything I gather will agree
with my underdeveloped sockets and damaged ratios

But I am unwilling to accept
imperfection this time around

And would rather spend an eternity
among the pieces that make a whole

Tamizh

THE ADDICTION

THE RITUAL

THE EMPATH’S MASK

Artist statement:

It's mostly a feeling of being trapped and controlled by an unknown force. It could be determinism or fatalism or even free will. Whatever it is, as long as the body is breathing, the soul can't have the freedom it yearns for. My art works and writings are expressions of my soul that sometimes appreciate the environment around me and at times curse the setting thereby wishing for a quick ending for the whole world. I believe that until the day we embrace death, we have the binding responsibility to be kind to our souls.

Merie Kirby

YOUR VOICE IS THE INSTRUMENT YOU ALWAYS HAVE WITH YOU

i.

On vacation in a strange bed I lie
next to my child and whisper stories
about a dog, a dragon, the beach, and
ice cream - the ingredients he’s chosen—
and when the story is done I listen
to him breathe until I too slip
beneath the cover of sleep.

ii.
A voice starts in darkness,
in the hollow of your body.

What is it made of?
Blood, breath, water.

How does it travel?
On tongues of airy flame.

Where does it go? Into the air,
the ears, the hair of the world,

waves rolling out
without shore.

iii.
End of seventh grade
choir teacher
asks me
not to sign up
for choir next year

bus driver
sends me
to the back
to protect her ears
from my laughter.

iv.
I’m so glad, the woman says,
that I’ve talked to you
on the phone, because now
when I read your emails
I hear them
in your voice.

v.
My brothers remember
I sang them to sleep.

Even after a day of arguments
and misunderstandings

I sang about babies fishing
for dreams, boys growing up,  

about chickens without bones
and cherries without stones,

about swallows and blackbirds
and the river Afton,

about being lost and found
by sweet sounds

standing in the dark,
filling the air.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

ENCHANTMENT

It would be easier to begin
if you believe I was enchanted.
Laid in a glass box, motionless, lips blue
or sleeping for a hundred years in a hidden castle,
or growing out my hair in a tower.
It would be easier, because then the poisons
in my veins would be simpler, the spinning wheel and
the spells cast against me part of a story
that always ends somehow in a wedding dress.
Because my wedding dress is getting older
in a box in the basement, my hair refuses to budge
even one inch and I refuse to remain still
in a glass coffin any longer than I have to.
The MRI tubes serve as symbol – to be buried,
to be reborn again, from the blackness.
I told you that my heart had been stopped,
my lungs slowed, the dreams ticking away
inside me starting to replace actual life,
actual motion. Here is a chair, not a throne,
pink with ribbons, that wheels me from place
to place. Here is the fair husband, who holds my hand
as a spin and fall, as I tremble with each step.
I could tell you otherwise; I could give you
a happier ending. The conversation might be –
middle daughter, made a mistake, ended up lost in the woods.
The youngest traveled farthest, to the end of the earth,
brought home the miniature dog in a walnut shell,
the silk scarf thin as cloud, the coat of many furs,
the charmed ring, fulfilled the prophecy, ended up
a tree, a cow, a white bird. The ending always a surprise –
behead the white cat to find a princess in disguise,
the mute queen burned at the stake by villagers rescued by swans.
The mythology prescribes magic, so I will wait here,
motionless, the needles and prescriptions piling
like dark hedges around the palace,
miracles perhaps hiding right before our eyes.

Ronda Piszk Broatch

I TAKE MY UNLOVED HIPBONE TO BED
- for M. S.

but my dreams are a wasteland,
waterless and unripe.

Because I’ve ceased writing letters
to the apocalypse, 

all my sorrows wilt in pots by the door.
If my brain lived outside my body,

I’d observe my misbehaviors,
choosing the ones I like best.

My hipbone’s got no color in moonlight.
My dreams have all been censored.

The woman who answers my phone mis-
pronounces every announcement.

I will donate my heart
when it is ripe enough.

I’ll volunteer my good foot,
the graffiti of my second decade,

the reason blood pools beneath skin.
Because I’ve stopped planning my death

my jilted spine crumples under burden
of a young century. I take my sleepy dreams

up the steep stairs, my hipbone swaying
to music of an unanswered phone.

Lisa Richter

ULCERATIVE COLITIS REMISSION CONDITIONAL
—after Madeline Bassnett's "Justice"

If I swallow the wrong pills. If I take them
at the wrong time, without food to soften
their blunt blow on the belly. If my stomach
should wage a campaign and grunt-push a red flag
into my heart’s untenderized meat. If the lining
of my large intestine and my rectum should swell
into rose-engorged tissue. If deep inside
those little underground bars there should be
sores weeping into their beers and those tears
should stream bright strawberry-red. If the pain
should seize hold of my gut and squeeze until
it flinches. If I should need to eat foods blander
than cloud-paste, mouthfuls of glue and cotton.
If in this now-familiar land of shit and blood
I must navigate mountain highways with hairpin
curves around which my body careens. If my nose
bleeds from the air as it thins into a sieve. If
avalanche. If brush fire. If turkey vultures lassoing
overhead mistake my fumbling limbs for prey.
If I lose myself in this blazing territory called
flare-up and cannot find my way back
to the forest, the still lake, the ocean.

Emily Unwin

WALLPAPER
*an erasure and contrapuntal poem

We made flower crowns in their driveway                             
With honeysuckle and                                                                      red wallpaper with black swirls
Sharp glossy leaves                                                 or am I confusing that with another bathroom?
From the two bushes framing                                    
Their front door

We tried to tie                                                                                                                          No and
The flimsy stems                                                                                                               remember
Together                                                                                                                     
Binding                                                                                                                         together,
A crown                                                                                             
For you, for me                                                                                                          
Between and for us
From them                                                                                                                         undesirable

       we prayed

      but  

The flowers simpered                                                                                    the wallpaper swarmed
And the leaves cut our scalps                                                                                   and he returned
But we would not go back inside                                                                                                      
So we cut our callous-less fingers

To become temporarily invisible,                                     what my mind chooses not to remember
nests
in my hair
makes small cuts against skull

seeps
into what I already know:

     the spaces between                                                                                                      must speak louder than the content

Azure Arther

FEASTING

Whispers over electric lines, radio waves, distance.
We meet at the table, our phones the plates, our voices the utensils, our pain the food.
The flavor of shared trauma tantalizes, memories that
neither of us can stomach but swallow anyway—this meal that scrapes the insides of our
throats raw, drawing moisture from the desert of tears,
where our emotion once lived—this spread is empty, but infinite.
Childhood PTSD becomes the dowsing rod, honed towards the depths:
Drink, and allow the fire to find the flood.
But it feels good to prepare this repast,
to taste the hurt
with someone who remembers who we were and who we could have been,
prior to the shattering, the tearing of the muscles,
the repetition that made us lycanthropes,
hybrids trapped inside of our skins,
part man,
part animal.
Feral at times.
Tame at times.
Cornered beast at times.
Mistreated at times.
Those times are what forged our bonds. Friendship.
So.
We whisper and eat heartbreak, a shared banquet of sorrow, 
remorse, lost dreams,
as bitter as their names when they go down,
But at least
we eat together.

Issue 81 Contributors

Azure Arther is a native of Flint, MI, who resides with her family in Dallas, TX. Although she is obsessed with literature, she has found that her passions are evenly distributed between writing, teaching, and parenting. Her work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Miracle Monocle, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Aurealis, Alternating Current Press, and others.

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). Broatch’s current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Broatch’s journal publications include Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered.

Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with MS who served as Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of six books of poetry, including Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA's Elgin Award, and Fireproof, upcoming from Alternating Current Press in spring 2022. Her work appeared in journals like The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

Nicole Hur is a Korean-American writer currently based in Seoul, South Korea. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hanok Review, a literary magazine devoted to Korean poets and poetry. You can find her on Twitter @nhurwords.

Lenna Jawdat is a poet, yoga teacher and psychotherapist. Her work is published or forthcoming in FreezeRay Poetry, Stone of Madness, Passenger Journal and Sledgehammer Lit. She's a Leo, Pisces moon, Scorpio rising, who loves bubble tea and growing herbs. She lives in Washington, DC (Piscataway/Nacostan land) with her partner, two cats, and a rotating cast of foster kittens.

Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020), an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist and a Kops-Fetherling Honorable Mention. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has work appearing recently in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. See jkaretnick.com.

Merie Kirby earned her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Grand Forks, ND and teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quartet Journal, Sheila-na-gig Online, West Trade Review and Mom Egg Review, and other journals. You can find her online at meriekirby.com.

Ayrton Lopez is a Mexican-Ecuadorian writer who lives and works in San Francisco. He was formerly the host of the spoken word poetry show "The Red Wheelbarrow" on KZSU 90.1 FM. His poems have recently appeared in Tupelo Quarterly and Leland Quarterly. Much of his work explores his experiences as a childhood cancer survivor.

Lisa Richter is the author of Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House, 2020), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the Robert Kroetsch Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Toronto.

Francine Rubin is the author of the poetry chapbooks If You're Talking to Me: Commuter Poems (dancing girl press), City Songs (Blue Lyra Press), and Geometries (Finishing Line Press). She is online at francinerubin.tumblr.com.

Tamizh worked as an International Baccalaureate educator in an International school for 7 years and is currently pursuing her M.Tech, PhD integrated course in Data Science. Tamizh's expertise lies in Tech integration, Professional Development Training and Curriculum development. Tamizh spends most of her free time painting, reading, writing articles, stories and poems, playing keyboard and watching documentaries/movies.

Emily Unwin (she/her) is a queer writer living in Athens, Georgia. She’s the co-founder of Finley Light Factory and tacky! Magazine. She has published in Polyester Magazine, Salty Magazine, The Magnolia Review, and Crack the Spine and was a writer in residence at Mudhouse. She is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins (finalist for the 2021 flash fiction prize) and the Made in Appalachia chapbook. Emily is represented by Joanna Volpe and Jordan Hill at New Leaf Literary.