Bad Cell

Poems

Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

Chronicling reproduction and parenting within a lesbian relationship, this poetry collection reveals both the anxieties and awe inspired by rearing children. 

In her frank, vulnerable third book of poetry, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers considers queer kinship through scientific, cultural, and personal lenses. Bad Cell presents perspectives on family and inheritance that are at once granular and comprehensive. From a pregnant woman being mistaken as a man by a store clerk to some “FAQs Re: Queers & Reproduction” that dispel stereotypes, the collection celebrates the fluidity of gender.

Early in the volume, Rogers addresses the emotional and physical complications of fertility treatment and pregnancy loss, a medical journey that, though harrowing, is gorgeously rendered in taut lyric language. Later, in forms like the abecedarian, definition poem, questionnaire, haibun, and a sonnet crown, the poet looks at how cells themselves—the stuff of life—divide and recombine. As in previous collections, Rogers leans into science-inspired verse, showcasing her talent for turning small-scale mechanics into meaningful metaphors.

The book also supports an openness to neurodivergence in children: “I want to assemble / something that can speak / for everyone,” says the speaker of “Apraxia.” And Rogers does, with the skill of a seasoned poet and essay writer, whose eye for the particularness of the world is encompassing and gives new insight into the experience of parenting: “But I’m not mom, I tell / writers who think I’ve gone soft, given up deeper subjects. As if these wild, / xenogeneic offspring aren’t a full-on wrestle with the deep.”