RogueAgent

WELCOME TO ROGUE AGENT’S SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! A HEARTFELT THANKS TO OUR AUTHORS, ARTISTS, AND READERS WHO HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE.

ISSUE 85
CONTENTS

APRIL 2022

Elyse Hart
Xiao Gan
Ruth Lehrer
a. m. dobles
Beth Goobie
INTERVIEW: Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani
Trish Shishikura
Jessica Lynne Furtado
Riayn Spaero
Valerie Gilreath
Zoë Fay-Stindt

CONTRIBUTORS

Elyse Hart

BLUEBERRY TROUBLE

Harbored with a dozen other
not-yet women.
A movie on: Dazed and Confused.
Except

there was no confusion.
Not a bosom to cry into either,
so I didn’t. 

Sixteen,
no reason to dismay parents,
to hear acrid words
rattle forever. 

They scraped out
my blueberry trouble.
A little blood when I came to,

no pain.
Nothing but:
I could go for ice cream and a movie,
so I did.

Xiao Gan

CALL ME DAUGHTER

I wonder what you will do on the dinner where I finally tell you about my girlfriend,
because you have already nailed onto my bedroom walls the rules:
(Girls become wives girls become mothers girls don’t elope with other girls),
because you had me kneel before Sarah since I was an infant,
because there are too many stories of people like me chased out of their own home,
disowned by their families torched alive by friends by fathers by mothers
Don’t drag me cattle prod in hand to the psychologist. I am not sick.
But take me into the graveyard at the bottom of the river and
pray while tucking me into the kraken corals the diamond seabed
Entomb me in a tree- when my hair becomes the bleached seaweed
my mouth skull-like fruits my eyes the dead polar bear’s iceberg
Maybe then you will call me daughter.

Ruth Lehrer

RECURSIVE

My handwriting is going downhill
They say it’s a sign
of mental slippage, or psychic distress
or maybe decay of muscles in the hand
in the brain
It makes me anxious
that my Ts are now uncrossed
and my Es slide into Ls
It’s a sign I think
of anxiety percolating
distrust between fingertips and
eyes
The sight of the world
the muddy potholes, the gray face
of my neighbor, the fury
of a woman who has stopped
biting her tongue
And my hands
who are at a loss
blood inconsistent and maddening
fingers who really want to be a fist
stuck scratching
cursive lists
bruised lines on paper
No wonder
the hill is always down.

a. m. dobles

(BINDINGS)

sometimes i am aching
expanding ribcage caging
me within this buzzing skin

i want to be bound so tightly
that my chest loosens its grip
on this heart that beats too loudly

i want to strain against constraints
my body absolved from
the indecisions of this brain

wrap me in your arms please
keep me from floating
untethered out of this skin

Beth Goobie

DAUGHTER OF THE A-MINOR SCALE

The A minor scale is liquid melancholy flowing across the keyboard,
hands of slanted autumnal light. Outside, trees scatter amber notes,
song of some other girl’s happiness as I sit, seventeen and hostage
to this piano bench and your bearded-teacher commands.
Daddy, we thought we would always be locked into each other;
I was your baby grand and you would play me,
that old classic with its predictable chord sequences
fingertipped onto a daughter’s growing child body.
After I left you, the A minor scale followed me everywhere.

Home is a place you’ve never been and always are.
The years droned on, random moments scattering me amber-gold
and the A minor scale had me again, the minor third with its perfect agony
calling to the angel in the major seventh, that G# trying to lift free –
child’s ghost hovering dutiful above the piano
and watching her body like a tune she couldn’t remember,

because it was your Magnificat, Daddy, all the notes
owned by your fingertips until I orphaned myself,
smashed learned chord sequences and released into cacophony.
Fury will take you further than melancholy, claw family from your face,
tear out nostalgia by the nerves, vault you onto a black Valkyries wind.
When tempest set me down with a last lightning kiss
and took its mad darkness over the horizon,
I stood in the ache of everything I had let go,
the A minor scale humming its requiem to the minor third,
freeing every trapped angel until ghost fingers fell away
and I came into the stillness where the first note waits.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani talks about embodiment
and writing The Gospel of Grace

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?

I think as we continue writing, we evolve along with our awareness of the self and our connection to our surroundings. My writings have always been an outpouring of everything that is contained in the self, or this body per se— memory, mainly and my abstractions of it. Although I noticed lately that my poems have more depth now as compared to my previous works as friends noticed it too. Maybe it goes with age and experience, but I have also discovered when I compared my process then and now is that writing poetry involves more than just metaphors of memory slithering through our hands that write. I mean, it was only when I learned to reconcile memory with presence—and I think that is total embodiment, where the relived experience is felt by the body, in the body, and made more real through the body in the present moment— I am able to produce poetry that is genuinely liberating, for me, that is. And I think that is how writing poetry becomes a redemptive act. We shift our awareness back to our body because everything— memory, even the forgetting and imagining, creating and recreating new realities occur here.

One of my favorite poems in the book is “Survival Guide,” a poem very much located in the body. Please say more about that particular poem—the process of writing it, what it means to you, anything you like.

“Survival Guide” is a product from my journal written back in 2014 during the second civil war in Libya. I polished it into a poem four years later, having gained a clearer perspective on that traumatic experience. It was first published in Hair-Raising, a charity anthology for MacMillan Cancer Support by Nine Pens Press, UK. It's quite remarkable that the title Hair-Raising which refers to the purpose of the anthology to raise hair for cancer patients, also points to the hair-raising experience that leads to the production of this poem.  

When we are engulfed by terror and the possibility of being killed, the senses heighten but are usually directed only to the body. Being on the verge of death made me more aware of my aliveness through my body and what I attach to it, in order to survive. That time, it was the head scarf. I wrote the story of our escape two days after we arrived in my sister in law's house in Zliten, a two-hour drive from Tripoli where the war was taking place. I never thought that the things my friend, Chris, said about checkpoints and hijab would actually happen to me (she actually said it as a joke while we're talking about the news and the unrest in the streets). The terror that I felt as I, my husband and our four small children then ages 8,7,4 and 10 months old drove away from the bombings and shelling and through checkpoints, was no joke. I had flashbacks of war movies I used to watch, and as I clung to my hijab which my infant kept on tugging, I remembered what Chris said.

I reread my journal five months after we arrived in my home country and started writing "the five phases of hijab". When there is nowhere to run to, when we are gripped with dread, the only thing one can do is to be still and confront the self. Someone said (I could not remember who exactly) that in order to win a war, one must surrender to a battle within. Three years later, I turned that narrative into a poem after realizing that despite the security my family's enjoying after fleeing that war, there are still inner conflicts that I must confront. So that piece speaks also of the battles we fight, for society and ourselves. The effects of our conformity or non-conformity to norms are manifested through our movements and choices. After all, survival depends upon the "self" that lives and moves and have its being through the body.

SURVIVAL GUIDE

Chris said, “When out in a Christian checkpoint, just make the
sign of the cross, with your hijab off, hanging just around the neck, but when nearing
a Muslim checkpoint, hurriedly put on hijab and say, “Assalamu Alaikum.”
In my head, I came up with “Five Phases of Hijab for non-Muslim Women”
in order to journey on smoothly and live. The first phase is the neck point
that is to be worn like a fashionable scarf around the neck. The second phase
is the half-head point, where it is worn lightly hanging over the head showing
strands of hair and/or ears, as preferred. Both “neck point” and “half-head point”
are not the prescribed hijab for Muslim women but a non-Muslim woman can
wear the hijab these ways in order to identify as non-Muslim in a moderately
conservative Muslim country. The third phase is the full-head point worn as a
hijab, covering the entire head and neck; the fourth phase is the face-point where
a niqab is worn covering the nose to mouth but eye area is clear. And the last and
final phase, is the sack-point where a burka is worn, a woman loosely mummified
in black, the eye area covered with mesh screen to see through. There are two
parts of the third phase: all black and colored. Married women in a conservative
area wear all-black while in cities and urbanized areas, the women can play
around with colors and textile designs. I wore the all-black hijab, travelling
to Zliten, almost wanting to go face-point because of fear.

Your work frequently references concepts like stillness, surrender, and flow. In what ways do you think this ability for the body to be still and surrender allows the creative process to emerge? What are some challenges you face in your creative process, and how do you get past them?

Whether it comes like an unexpected guest, or a memory that tugs at my sleeves, or children's footsteps in my head or I have to summon it out of the blank sheet that has been staring at me for the entire morning, the process always involves presence. This is the only way to be still, to surrender and then enter flow. I have to sit there and allow what needs to be birthed through me.

I learned stillness and surrender through a mindfulness practice that includes body movement, breathing exercises and meditation. It's amazing what "going inside" does to my entire being. It provides clarity through a sense of knowing the authentic self and that as a writer, I am conduit and container that needs cleaning every now and then. And for ideas to flow through me, I need to be still, unmoved by my surroundings while my contents (thought/memory) are being processed until it's ready to be solidified into the page. It is almost a meditative practice, but more fun because the mind gets to recreate realities and recycle trashy experiences into a treasury of wisdom.

I used to have no schedule for writing and just depend on the "muse" but inspiration can be tricky, like a line or thought appears when your hands could not write (dripping with soap suds or full of sticky bread dough). Sometimes I really have to stop what I am doing and then grab a pen or my phone and write the idea down. And there are times when I could not just do it. So, I decided to set a schedule: sleep early and wake up at 4, meditate and summon the words, the story, the poem. They always come, something always gets written because the first line, regardless of its quality, is the pathway for next lines. Part of "summoning" is creating that pathway. That means I simply must write. However, consistency is still a challenge, especially when it comes to editing, rewriting or revising. But writing is just like a day job. Nothing gets done if we don't show up. If I cannot write a poem, I write on my journal. Every single day. And I still call it work.

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

These are a few books in my shelves (not all poetry) that I keep rereading for enjoyment, inspiration, and guidance:

1. Bright Dead Things- Ada Limon

2. Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays- Sonya Huber

3. Night Sky with Exit Wounds- Ocean Vuong

4. Dear Ghosts, - Tess Gallagher

5. The Essential Rumi- translations by Coleman Barks w/John Moyne

6. Big Magic- Elizabeth Gilbert

7. Dusk, Night, Dawn- Anne Lamott (and many other Anne Lamott books)

Some Rogue Agent fans are just beginning to explore what making poetry about the body would look like for them. What advice would you give to someone looking for new ways to imagine embodiment, beyond the literally described experience of the body?

Our body is all we have and ever need in order to create, so the first advise I would give is to take good care of it. Make sure you are well and whole— body, mind and soul. Eat well, exercise, meditate, get sunlight, moonlight, consume healthy literature and do things that make you feel good. Then show up. Just write. And stick to a schedule that includes time for self-reflection and reading. Also, try to master the ego that wants perfection and control. Lastly, make friends with your body and get to know what the self is saying or wants to express through its parts- hair, wrinkles, liver spots, etc. and what the self wants you to remember through its movements— the kneeling, walking, seeing, cooking, scrubbing, etc. Pay attention and be gracious.

Trish Shishikura

ST. BENEDICT’S SCHOOL FOR PROPER LADIES

My uniform crept below my knees—
ivory blouse, round collars, an odd hem
that tucked out of my skirt whenever
I moved or played or cartwheeled.

We would lift our skirts, pull the blouses back in,
repeat. This is not a war about my country yet.
When 9/11 happened, all the girls at school
sat around a single TV, blouses unbuttoned,

legs naked. It was 38 degrees. Our skirts pooled 
around us. Elsewhere, birds scattering over
debris. Meanwhile, in the auditorium, 
we looked like a board game.

Imagine the first gasp of battle,
as the sky unveils itself an eternal blue
and you spend days waiting for planes,
listening to helicopters tear through the city.

War arrives when your ears begin to hear 
phantoms before seeing them.
We were convinced our city was next.
Who would War retrieve first? 

Hidden at the back of the closet—
behind stacks of towels, watches, cologne:
videotapes of grown-ups sliding tongues
into each other’s mouths, tasting 

secrets dripping from their private parts.
Research suggests that current events 
manifest more symptoms related to trauma. 
The news reports on skinship,

the scent of a culpable afternoon
with vials of white musk, a soiled bed, stones. 
According to art, trauma changes color,
resembles quartz, quivers when touched.

Light slithered into the room we were in
where we lay, damp air kissing our skin.
These days, phantoms follow me to sleep
as they did, the first time I touched myself.

Perhaps it has always been a war, body 
against body. War is here to retrieve us.
He asks, 

             what are you afraid of? 

Jessica Lynne Furtado

SELF-PORTRAIT AS JURASSIC PARK RAPTOR

Bred for destruction, I’m bone-lust
            and blood-hunger wrapped in a coat
                        of mail. I hustle a hint of fossil,
            scales shimmering disco as I curl
small hands around man-shaped air.

                        Here’s a lesson in how to be light on your feet:
stand directly in front of me; don’t bother
            running. I’ll be there before your toes
                        follow heel off the ground. I call this move
            Velocirapture, hunting most things
that hunt the rhythm of body heat. 

The sound of bones is not unlike memory,
            ground down to the most digestible scraps.
                                    I never attack the same place twice,
                        testing your fences systematically for weaknesses.

            All greedy animals possess
a pining for something that glints.
            When it cuts, there’s no time
                        to sharpen your own talons.

                                                            Red is a favorite color,
                                                a promise of feast.
            If you’ve never seen lipstick on a raptor
­it’s because we lick ourselves clean
                        of evidence. I don’t claim to be an efficient
murderess, but I’ve been known to fulfill my own needs.

            When the keeper claps open my cage
to deliver flesh-gift and a slit
                        of light, I narrow my sharp-shoot
            marble gaze like the cleverest of clever girls,
marvel at my own bright smile
            in the blink of a cow-eyed dinner guest.

You like me best when I leave a mess
of marks, anything but polite.

Riayn Spaero

SH ‘LL LIGHT H R OWN PYRE

As told by the vertebrae:

                                                Wiles,
                                                the pokeweed,
                                                illness adapts.

                                                Lost,
                                                have we, roots to thwart
                                                spoil.

                                                Sternum
                                                stunts,
                                                like knuckles, cocked to teach
                                                death

                                                of maple and meat,
                                                we miss no more
                                                than prunes mourn
                                                plum days. Hunger,

                                                behind us, get thee! Hunger,
                                                cast out. Hunger,
                                                wrench, from viscera to pore,
                                                a wom n no man summits,

                                                lest his mouth hew
                                                upon our breast                      
                                                bone, fingers rend on wing
                                                blade, or ash choke—                        

                                                a thief we dare,
                                                trespass,
                                                swallow her ash,
                                                sate these blades. Please,
                                                try us. Friend,                                     
                                                hear h r laugh,
                                                see h r gait
                                                kindle devour,
                                                pray

                                                betray. Might we
                                                snatch the errant wom n—
                                                woodland danc r—
                                                and to bone,
                                                once more,
                                                howl h r
                                                flame.

Valerie Gilreath

ANOREXIA AS ABUSIVE LOVER

The line is always the same:
but we’re so good together.
No one makes me feel like you do.
The first weeks are all endorphins,
you-and-me-against-the-world
secret love. He gives me clavicle,
iliac crest, the knob at the wrist,
zygomatic arch. Smiles crack
like bones. The fissures
apparent. Then it wears thin.

Zoë Fay-Stindt

TO CURE MY LONELY

I wear double linen to bed,
stretch my yellow-socked feet
out the window to feel the bats
brush up against the house and get
some good peripheral loving.
I’m glad for the rain, for the nicotine,
even the clogging shower. I’m glad
for myself. Once, a man at a stoplight
pinched his nipples at me, smiling
until the light turned. I’m far from him
now, remembering that the loneliness
at least, is safe, and stuffed
with its own good love and anyway
the ravine full of oaks down the road
is getting greener by the day.
I wonder if I’ll spend all my life
figuring out what to do with color,
how to love it well enough. How
to hold its wonder in this gruesomely
anchored, claustrophobic body.
Last winter, your brother crawled under 
the table to assign king cake slices, 
and I won the small fève: a pale
ceramic moon. Your mother lit candles
to pull the muck from your ears.
Now I spend dusks grounding
myself, feet dug into cool earth:
trunk to spine, fingers smoothing
wheat tufts. Careful, the thistle.
Careful, spider tickle. Beware,
mountain edge. I watch the irises
work through their lifespans, 
unassuming, purple more staggering 
than any man-lipped confession.
From my coin purse, my small moon
counts the unbuttoned days with me.

Issue 85 Contributors

a. m. dobles is a student of life. Armed with a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences, she enjoys capturing experiences through her photography and writing. You can find her at amdobles.com.

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Their poetry has appeared in museum galleries, on the radio, on the streets of small towns, in community farm newsletters, and other strange and wonderful places. Z’s work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been featured or is forthcoming in SWWIM, RHINO, Muzzle, VIDA, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.

Jessica Lynne Furtado is an artist in multiple mediums & a librarian. Her visual work has been featured in Muzzle Magazine, PANK, & Waxwing, and her writing has appeared in apt, Stirring, & VIDA Review. Her debut poetry chapbook A Kiss for the Misbehaved is forthcoming from BatCat Press. Visit Jess at www.jessicafurtado.com.

Xiao Gan is a student poet and writer from Singapore who has been published in The Weight Journal and Teen Ink.

Valerie Gilreath lives in north Georgia with her wife and four cats. She is a civic entrepreneur, grant writer, and early literacy advocate. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Chaffin Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, Rio Grande Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and You Might Need to Hear This, among others. Valerie has a MFA from Georgia State University. She and her wife run a bookmobile program in their community.

Beth Goobie is the author of 25 books. A new collection of poetry, Lookin' for Joy, is due out with Exile Editions in 2022. It was gratefully written on an SK Arts grant. Beth lives in Saskatoon.

Elyse Hart is a poet and musician residing in Venice, CA. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, The Nervous Breakdown, Okay Donkey Mag, and others. Her music composition Five Poems of Mirabai for Flute and Soprano won top prize at a UNCG competition in 2020. Follow her on Instagram @elysehartpoetry, Soundcloud, and elysehart.com.

Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the young adult novel, Being Fishkill, the poetry chapbook, Tiger Laughs When You Push, and many other poems out in the wild. Her website is ruthlehrer.com.

Trish Shishikura (宍倉満利耶) is a photographer, creative director, and poet from Tokyo, Japan and currently based in Manila, Philippines. Her poetry has been featured in The Mekong Review, Softblow Literary Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Rogue Agent and is forthcoming in Tokyo Poetry Journal and SUSPECT. She was a fellow for poetry in the 52nd Silliman University National Writers Workshop and is the art director for the Philippine literary journal, Ilahás. See her website here: www.trishshishikura.com.

Riayn Spaero is a writer, independent filmmaker, and performance artist. Her work has appeared in or at Autofocus, The Believer, Longreads.com, The Bushwick Daily, and The Columbus International Film + Video Festival. Spaero is reconnecting with African American healing arts and the words and rituals of her grandmother.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani has authored Letters from Libya: Memoirs-in-Letters, a chapbook locally published by Bulawan Books (2018) which chronicled her family’s escape from the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014 and a debut collection, The Gospel of Grace: Poems (NewComer Press, UK 2021). Her works have appeared in various literary journals, magazines and online exhibits across the globe. She is also part of charity anthologies: Hair-Raising (Nine Pens Press), Plant People: An Anthology of Environmental Artists (Plants & Poetry Journal), and HerMana: A Radical Re-imagining by Womxn Writers (Regional Arts & Culture Council). She previously taught Translation, Speech and Drama, and Child and Adolescent Literature in Capitol University (where she defended her PhD dissertation on Flow Theory in creative writing pedagogy) and currently teaches Research in the Senior High School department of Saint Mary’s School. She is also a member of Nagkahiusang Magsusulat sa Cagayan de Oro (NAGMAC), an organization of writers from a region in the Philippines where she lives with her husband and four children. Find her at: https://www.facebook.com/gracespills73/.