Jessica Rowshandel

Jessica Rowshandel (they/them) is a freelance writer and author of the book Lupus: 365 Tips for Living Well. They have written extensively about coping with lupus, which includes educating readers about health and science literacy — an indispensable skill in an era proliferated with fake and misleading news. As an intersectional (former) social worker with a graduate degree from Columbia University, they’re driven to bring awareness to social issues through writing. Jessica is a lifelong poet and fiction writer and is particularly fond of the worlds of magical realism and speculative and science fiction where anything is possible. In addition to writing, they explore the cosmos both as a visual artist and a space science enthusiast. To contact Jessica, send an email to jrowshandel [at] gmail.com.

Poetry

“Gentrification” in Entre Magazine (forthcoming)

“they passed the two browns in the car.
One by one they walked their dogs the secret
police the suvs slid into and
from driveways chins narrowed & questioned us.”

“decapitated” in Entre Magazine (forthcoming)

“by 5 i was ready to be decapitated.
decapitated for jesus because just in case”

“Line Drawing” in Ouch! Collective

“As soon as I die, gently pull out my eyelashes.
Lay each one end to end. Get the glue and brush it over
this new line.”

“Speak” in Bizarrchitecture

“There’s a soap opera in your belly
and in that one script the Speaks died
but you know soap operas
full of all that zombie shit”

“Bed Sheets” in Statement Magazine

“and spending money and time together instead,
on things like swollen hearts and coyote valleys,
Japanese dinners at the bottom of the Pacific”

“ex gf moon landing” in beestung

“buzz is my real name. the rocket
sounds our bodies made.”

“Landscape of an Apartment Rental” in beestung

“I summon twelve stark suns,
call both the dusk and dawn”

“Broken House” (an exquisite corpse with poet Ripley Hush) in Icebreakers Lit

Nominated for Best of the Net 2024

“and smiled on –sun rising in a birdless sky–
even as our mouths fell to the ground as bricks”

“Used Love Salesman” in Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself

“Those sweet nothings I whispered that was just air with sounds that made words that made the moon that made the moan and swoon — no big deal, right just a little breeze rustlin their trees!”

“Jess and the Real Mom” in Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself

“Her eyes shimmer in hummingbirds. Mom’s lipstick on my cheek a new fossil i will plant in the grass with my remains.”

Calibration in “Company Policy” issue of MIDLVLMAG

“You must at least be lighter than a brown paper bag
like how we calibrate our neighbors
in the suburbs against the Sun”

Dinner in the print anthology Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love

“This is a map of your heartbeat
as you eat your dinner.”


Short Stories

“Akbar and the Two Wishes” in The Acentos Review

“‘Do whatever the hell you want,’ he wheezed. ‘Do everything they say is bad for your health. You’ll be happier.’ A rapid succession of irregular beeps bellowed from one of the machines monitoring him. Its cords and wires reached out from its chest, wrapped themselves around his ribs, invaded his nostrils, burrowed into his skin – a tangle of heavy fishing line and Akbar, the floundering fish at the end of it.”

A shitty draft of “The Death Machine” in trash to treasure lit where trashed work is given new life

“For most of its young life, the euthanasia rollercoaster has slept. Today, it will wake up for just a few minutes to usher the living up and down its steel hills. The death machine will never know the thrills of the carnival that once lived here, nor witness ecstatic children race beneath hot sun after hot sun, to the next adventure machine and the next.”

This story is very drafty draft that has turned into an entire draft of a novel of the same name.

“Language is a Virus from Outer Space: Divining Burroughs” in the print anthology Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs

“I will tell you about students with their sea legs who disembark from a red ship, tumble out of screeching taxis, visit that same bar, and get drunk in the daytime.”

From the Gay & Lesbian Review, November/December 2022, by Charles Green:

“Other essays feel more like experimental fiction. Jessica Rowshandel, in ‘Language is a Virus from Outer Space: Divining Burroughs,’ conducts a séance with Burroughs, who speaks in words drawn from his own works in ‘cut-up’ style, which are then ‘interpreted’ back into an intelligible form.”

“Pink: A Short Story” in HiConcept Magazine

“You are not prone to decay. When her eyes opened, her face was a pale grey in the plastic moon above her. She lay beneath the grapefruit head of a man removing his nosey latex fingers from her mouth as he finished checking for white spots and tumors.

You are prone to decay and that’s okay— a rhyme she thought up that day at the Dream House.”