RogueAgent

ISSUE 90
CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER 2022

Susan Rich
Sarah Stockton
Abdulrazaq Salihu
Hannah Siden
Hilary King
Jen Yáñez-Alaniz
Victoria Lau
Jen Gayda Gupta
Sunday T. Saheed
Laura Goldin

CONTRIBUTORS

Susan Rich

ODE TO THE BODY

While asleep my body still
grows eyelashes, threads air from
heart to lungs, replenishes stars.

The seagrass extends its roots,
will be photographed from space.
While asleep, the cat interrupts

the silence; his twenty toenails
keep growing. When my body
decides to create an embolism

the size of a brigantine
in a bottle, my blood works
overtime through the swells

of ventricles, the rigging of chest
and hips. I sip a double cocktail,
then rest a hand on Watson’s

wave-shaped ears. He floats in
the scent of face cream, licks
my eyelids and nostrils clean.

While asleep I dream of water,
crab pots and the red sting of jellyfish.
If a jellyfish attached inside my chest

that’s how this strange breath feels—
the heft of everything known.
While asleep this body decides

with a hundred indecisions what it
will do next ---- a lighthouse island
in Finland, a Barbados holiday?

What will the body decide?
Bubbles served with everything
or a chorus of new shoes?

What’s next, the body asks—
yet what can I offer her except
oceanic waters: a living, breathing blue— 

Sarah Stockton

IN WHICH I ATTEMPT METAPHORS IN CONVERSATION WITH MY DOCTOR

~ My heart is at the center
of a hybrid ecosystem. Consider
a tree
in which blood-sap ferries
the biotics
of essential energy

~ I am the ghost rider

of a virus that will live
longer
than my own beliefs
and which eviscerates
everything

~ all life

connected, circulating
brachia and vagus
permeating these lands
which are not
my ancestral ground
only
my temporary home

~ this fragile body

is floating on blood-borne waters
and I’m sinking

~ If the heart is
the center of the trunk of a tree
then my body
                        is a carved and weathered cedar boat
rocking in the wind’s wake
                        rocking
I rock myself to sleep

Abdulrazaq Salihu

PRINCIPLE OF DESPAIR

Light here is a
Desacralized bone.
On the news, bodies are drowning into songs.
boys stare onto their foreheads
& pass along.
this is why I know all
their names by heart;
why I hold their bones
happy within me.
tonight, I hear their spirit-radicals
in my palm.
I stretch my hands for grace -
& my name hallows behind me.
I fold my eyes to this despair;
I sing plath to this body, godlights
within;
if tonight you will see a body mangled in
prayer, perhaps you'll
rise with this poem, and this soul,
& in the harmony of the godheads.

Hannah Siden

THINGS I COULD DO

I could tear up calendars, 
Cancel appointments with my fists clenched, 
Scratch out imaging dates in
Angry red pen then feed them to the cat

I could grit my teeth and run
Headfirst through the hospital wall,
Thin blue gown billowing as it 
Catches the wind to carry me away

They could find me one day far from the ER
In the middle of the woods, perhaps
Out to sea, or deep in the savannah 
Under the shade of an acacia tree

Peeling an apple with a penknife 
And humming to myself
Becoming part of the roots I sit on 
As I fall apart in beautiful, earthy chunks

I could begin my new life as a tree
Thorny branches touching into blue skies, 
Hospital blue — wider
Than I ever thought possible

Hilary King

THERAPY OF RED VINES®

I don’t sit in a minivan
at nine o’clock at night
in a CVS parking lot
eating Red Vines for pleasure,

I tell my imaginary therapist.
I’m eating my feelings.
Your feelings taste like
licorice? My therapist asks.

Yes, I say, this cliched rage
goes down like a pound
of red gummy sticks that
threaten my teeth and

reduce my stomach
to rubble for days.
Therapy was my husband’s
idea, one he would hand

to me when I was down
like a tissue or an apple.
I enjoy apples, how they sit
so solid in the hand, then

their flesh disappears
like a whisper within the body.
Whispering works as well
as shouting, my pretend therapist says 

but I can’t hear anything
over the twisting of the empty
licorice wrapper as I
ball it up in my fist.

Jen Yáñez-Alaniz

KNEELING QUINCEAñERA

Virgencita of first dance mercy
A holy rosary twists around the wrist

A ribboning flows from between soft thighs
The crimson sin of Eve’s unraveling

Quinceañera offered in blooming white
Vessel of sex and transgression

I kneel

Place two dozen red roses
at Mother Mary’s feet

My gilded crown tilts
toward Her radiance

From my throat   a retch    
an absolution

Knuckles clench
the base

of my altar

Victoria Lau

ABECEDARIAN OF DEROGATORY TERMS FOR WOMEN

A is for Attention-seeker. B is for Bore and Boar.
A Bore is a woman who men thinks looks like a Boar,
one not worthy for them to buy drinks for.
A “B” is a  Bitch, a woman who speaks her mind or
the Crazy ex-girlfriend. Bitches be Crazy.
Clingy: plucking petals off an ox-eye-daisy.
He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not . . .
The things he “just forgot,” and the nude screenshots
of his side Chick. Cock tease is what he calls
the Cunt who gave him “blue balls.”
The slippery Cold fish. Cheap is the Cow
he gets his milk from for free. And now
for D: the DUFF, Daddy issues, Desperate, Dramatic.
E is for Easy; an Easy Laid. Emotional and Erratic.
And F is for the F-word—Fat. The worst thing a woman can be.
To throw like a Girl. To run like a Girl—the worst thing a man can be.
H is the High maintenance girlfriend who never even got his bare
minimum. H is also for Hysterical when she demanded him to care.
H is for Ho, what the media and her friends called her—
She was at the party. She was drinking. They did not rape her.
I's the Irrational ideas she gets when she is J, a Jealous
girlfriend. K is for that Kind of girl. A breed who sleeps with fellas
on the first date. L is for Loose, the one who would never become his M,
the Missus or Mrs. N is when the missus becomes a Nag every p.m.
O is for Old. Old hag. Old bat. Old crone. P is for PMS.
Pig. Plain Jane. And Pussy is a man who acts like a damsel in distress.
The Q is the Queen Bee. R is for the Roast Beef of the S, the Slut,
the Skank, the Stacey who rejected him. He's a nice guy but,
that made him go on a mass shooting spree. T is for Thot, Twat,
Trashy, Tramp: all names for women who have sex with a lot
of men. U is for Ugly and Used up. V is for Vagina. And W is the she
who is a Whore. That Woman. She is a X. She is a Y. She is a Z.
She is a XYZ . . . simply because she is a she.

Jen Gayda Gupta

IN HIGH SCHOOL

there was a gaping hallway that led to the library—
my favorite place to hide. I remember that cat
walk of dread, where the boys would wait
to yell at my new thighs, where I learned
the only way out is to shrink until you
disappear, learned that I could suck
the lust from my flesh with each
refused bite, each trip to the
bathroom, a swirl of their
hunger flushed down
the drain. The first
time I let a boy
reach for my
dissolved
hip, I held
my breath
ashamed,
waiting
for him
to find
nothing
but
lonely
bones.

Sunday T. Saheed

THE EARTH IS A CRYING OWL

there is a face in every door I open.
my walls echo screams, abstract jingles
& my thatched roof showed scratches all over.
there wasn’t a riot here.

I once opened a door
to enter moimi’s shelves —
& be safe of these voices
like blades that cut through the defenses

of my heart, that they bled fear.
but the earth is a crying owl
whose hoots coo around like scattered
manna dropped at the doors of the Israelites.

the newspaper I burnt yesterday was demonic,
it bled from its heart. & two teeth from the
mouth of the man in blue tuxedo on the
headline slipped off him & fell on me.

there’s no safer way home,
than through the imaginary ladder that
leads through the sky
—even the coffins are no longer safe

Laura Goldin

A FEW THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME

In a landscape of inanimate small objects, I was speaking very quietly,
giving instructions that could not be followed. 

On the table, I was the dead woman on the table.

It occurred to me to stop pretending.

It occurred to me to take my head off and examine it.

I found myself lacking in emphasis. 

I found a thought that all I’d ever been was angry.

I was apart from all the others, eating fruit,
making embodied noises.

I was walking slowly, making circles too small to permit of observation.
 
I considered the cantilevered window. 

I reviewed the sidewalk, and the intervening air. 

To undertake myself had been my dearest wish and was
the noblest of all my failed ambitions.

Issue 90 Contributors

Laura Goldin is a publishing lawyer in New York. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in One Art, Club Plum, Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag, Tiny Wren, Blue Heron Review, and Driftwood.

Jen Gayda Gupta is currently on the run from responsibility, living nowhere at all with her husband and their dog. She enjoys big mountains and tiny spoons. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Dodging the Rain, Jellyfish Review, Sky Island Journal, The Shore, Wrongdoing and others. You can find her @jengaydagupta and jengaydagupta.com.

Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Hilary King is a Pushcart-nominated and Best of the Web-nominated poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in TAB, Salamander, Minerva Rising, Belletrist, Fourth River, The Cortland Review, SWIMM, and other publications.

Victoria Lau is currently working on her MFA degree at Lindenwood University. She was 3rd place poetry winner for the Random House Creative Writing Competition in 2013. Her work has also been published in The Olivetree Review. She was also the 1st place winner for the Nancy Dean Medieval Prize in 2020. She is a poetry reader for GASHER Journal and one of the marketing coordinators for The Adroit Journal. She has taught poetry at Sadie Nash Summer Institute. She is a writing assistant at the Borough of Manhattan Community College Writing Center and an adjunct English lecturer at Queens College.

Seattle poet Susan Rich is the author of five poetry books, including Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). Also, Cloud Pharmacy (shortlisted for the Julie Suk Prize), Alchemist’s Kitchen (Finalist for the Washington State Book Award) Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer's Tongue (PEN USA Winner). She has earned a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Times (of London) Literary Supplement Award. Prior publications include: the Harvard Review, New England Review, and World Literature Today. Her 6th collection, Blue Atlas is forthcoming from Red Hen Press.

Sunday T. Saheed is the author of Rewrite The Stars, a recipient of the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors award, 2021, is a 17 year old poet and reviewer. He has his works published/forthcoming in Rough Cut Press, Brittle Paper, Salamander Ink, Aster Lit, Lumiere Review and elsewhere. You can reach on Instagram @poetsundaysaheed.

Abdulrazaq Salihu is a Nigerian 17 year old poet, spoken word artist, and writer. He was the winner of most valuable contestant (male) at HIASFEST 2021, first runner up for spoken poetry and second runner up for on the spot poetry contest. He is a member of the hilltop creative arts foundation and also an organizer of HIASFEST (The biggest teen literary event in Africa). He has some of his poems published/upcoming in SHAGAZ anthology; an Indian Anthology that won fastest compiled anthology, Konya Shamsrumi magazine, Christmas tide, Waah re kisan, stories from the heart, Amulet poetry magazine, Icefloe magazine, and more.

Hannah Siden is a writer and filmmaker living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). She can be found on Twitter @hannah_siden or at https://www.hannahsiden.com.

Sarah Stockton is the Editor-in-Chief of River Mouth Review. Her own poems can be found in EcoTheo Review, About Place Journal, and Crab Creek Review among many others, and she is the author of the chapbooks Time's Apprentice (dancing girl press, fall 2021) and Castaway (Glass Lyre Press, Fall 2022). Sarah lives in the Pacific Northwest, by the Salish Sea.

Jen Yáñez-Alaniz is a Texas-based Chicana poet and activist. She is the co-creator of Loving, Grieving, & Surviving /Chicanas Read the Poetry of Healing and her work, “Matrilineal Poetics: Toward an Understanding of Corporeality and Identity” was featured in Latinas in Hollywood Herstories. Her latest and forthcoming publications are included in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, Mom Egg Review, I Sing: The Body, and more.