The Unsparing Poetry of Lisa Fogarty
- Elizabeth Gracen
- Apr 7
- 12 min read
By Elizabeth Gracen:
The Flapper Press Poetry Café continues to feature the work of poets from around the globe. It is an honor to share their work and learn more about their lives, influences, and love of poetry.
This week, we are honored to feature the work of poet Lisa Fogarty.
Lisa Fogarty is a writer, journalist, and poet from New York who has been published in Change Seven, The New York Times, and Mom Egg Review. She is the co-host of an eating disorders podcast called The Hunger Trap. You can find out more about Lisa by visiting her website, Instagram, and by listening to her podcast.
I reached out to Lisa to talk about her writing career, podcast, and incredibly powerful poetry.
Please meet Lisa Fogarty!
Elizabeth Gracen: Lisa, thank you for submitting your work to Flapper Press. I’ll tell you right off the bat that your poetry really struck a chord with me. The overwhelming female perspective of the work holds a ferocious honesty that resonates with my own experience as a woman in this beautiful, horrible world. I’m pretty damned sure that it will do the same for many who read the poems. Would you please tell our readers a little bit about yourself and how you found poetry as such a potent conduit for self-expression?
Lisa Fogarty: What a beautiful compliment—thank you, Elizabeth! It’s an honor to be featured in Flapper Press. I was born and raised in Queens, New York, to immigrant parents who were born in Italy. My parents and extended family were hardworking, practical, and honest people who didn’t hold back when it came to verbal expression. If someone thought something, they said it plainly and like it was—in English and in Italian—for better or worse!
I wasn’t a big talker as a kid, but I listened and observed people. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write things down. I would eavesdrop on adult conversations and jot them down in my diary, along with my interpretation of what was being said. I didn’t realize at the time that I was writing little poems about my uncles playing cards and how the deck of cards sounded when they were shuffled, little things like that. I probably started writing poetry and little stories because those family get-togethers were long and boring and it was something to do (what I wouldn’t give to get one more long Sunday back with all of my family).
Writing was a way of saying, “I’m here, this happened, and this is how it felt.”
And then I could preserve those words. I could make them stick around. That felt more powerful than shouting across a table to be heard.
EG: You have worked as a writer, covering many subjects over the years, and your podcast, The Hunger Trap, looks fascinating and informative. I’m curious if you apply the same process and discipline for writing prose and producing your podcast as you do for writing poetry. What’s the same? What’s different?
LF: Such a great question. I’m always fascinated by how other writers face the terrifying act of sitting down to write. The short answer: everything begins as a jumbled mess full of bad adjectives and then, if I’m lucky, it slowly sharpens into something clean, cool, and disciplined.
I’ve been a journalist for almost 20 years, and every story starts with curiosity. I research how others have covered a topic, look for a fresh angle, check SEO to see if it’s sellable—but I really know it’s right when my heart starts racing and I can’t stop thinking about who I want to interview and what I want to learn.
Writing poetry or creative prose is obviously a very different animal, but for me the similarity is that heart-racing feeling when I know a kernel of an idea might work. I typically write my first few drafts in a notebook. This feels less scary to me—it’s more primal and less committal. When I finally type it up, the fun part begins: I cut ruthlessly until only the important words are left. I feel a little bit like a cold assassin when I edit. It’s a freeing feeling.
Podcasting is different again. My friend and co-host Diana Bowman and I created The Hunger Trap because we both have lived experience with eating disorders and wanted to explore diet culture and eating disorders through the lens of her science background and my journalism experience. Writing is a mostly solitary act, so it was incredible to collaborate with someone I admire and respect. My ideas for the podcast stemmed from curiosity. “What do I want to learn more about? Who have I always wanted to interview?” Diana and I trusted each other and, most of the time, went full speed ahead with each other’s ideas. I think that kind of enthusiasm was what helped us book some truly amazing guests—doctors, real people sharing their journeys with us. I also loved editing our footage: a quiet room, headphones, hearing all of the coughs and “ums” and deciding how many filler sounds to remove so that they aren’t a distraction and what to keep to retain everyone’s beautiful, imperfect way of speaking. Editing writing and audio feels almost sacred.
EG: Several of the poems featured in this article submerged me into memories of my youth and the days of being a young woman in a world where men were (are) always on the prowl, voracious to devour the young women in their paths. The Epstein news bombardment with all the vile revelations has induced what feels like collective trauma on us all, our worst fears come true. Your poems sink into the marrow of what it feels like to be viewed as prey by older men, and you pierce the sickening realization of how wealthy, entitled people view the world. You don’t offer resolution or remedies in the poems. You are an astute observer of the human animal, so I’m curious about how you’re feeling about the world in general at the moment. Where do you find joy and hope in the midst of all the mayhem? How does poetry come into play to help you with tough emotions?
LF: You said it perfectly. Look, I want to pull my hair out five times a day after reading the news. If I had a good resolution or a remedy for anything, I would run for office. What I can do is observe my environment with as much clarity as possible, reflect on it, and shape it into words that maybe help make a little more sense of things. That’s all.
I’m not a historian by any stretch, but I read a lot and listen to history podcasts—The Rest Is History is my favorite. Putting our moment in historical context grounds me; it reminds me that good and evil have always coexisted. There’s a lot happening in America right now that makes me sick—the Epstein files and the lack of accountability for raping and abusing women and children, the emails exposing powerful men as crisis capitalists, Gisèle Pelicot’s horrific abuse at the hands of her husband and 72 different men. I could go on and on.
I don’t look away. I let myself feel the anger. I talk about it, and I vote. But I refuse to let anger blind me to beauty.
I find joy and hope in my two children, who will be ten times smarter and savvier than I ever was. I find it in good men like my husband, Patrick, who is our teen daughter’s favorite person to grab Starbucks with just to talk about life. He’s teaching our son how to express himself, how to be kind, how to say thank you. My dad was my best friend growing up, so watching this unfold feels like a gift.
I see hope in the women in my yoga class who are 30 years older than me and standing on their heads, living proof that ageist bullshit is just that. I feel it watching Alysa Liu skate to Donna Summer, win that gold medal, and radiate pure joy, knowing my daughter has young women like her to look up to. I’m grateful for voices like Melani Sanders, building community around perimenopause and menopause, and for Jesse Welles’ super-smart, cathartic folk music that elucidates the rage and confusion so many of are feeling right now.
I’m not sure I can write poetry untouched by my female perspective. Growing from a girl into a woman can be a brutal initiation. But I wouldn’t trade being a woman for anything.
I love everything about women: our sharp intuition, intelligence, the way we show up and care for people, how we move from the object to the subject of our life’s sentence in the course of a few short years and adapt to all of the changes.
I even love how our menstrual cycles mirrors the lunar cycle—we are absolutely freaking magical. So, when some men disrespect us and fail to treat us with humanity, I don’t believe them. And this is important because it’s easy to believe people with more power. You can’t internalize it. You can’t believe them.
I also refuse to stop loving and needing men—the good ones. And there are many good ones. Good and bad have always coexisted and always will.
EG: I love to ask our contributors about their artistic influences. It’s always fascinating to hear about the poets, writers, musicians, and artists who have impacted their own art. Please share!
LF: I agree! I’ll list a few and kick myself later for leaving people out. Pablo Neruda was the first poet I fell in love with, and I discovered him through a sweet Italian film called Il Postino. His themes of love and desire made me swoon as a romantic kid. Then I matured and read poems of his like “I’m Explaining a Few Things” about the fascist bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. I kept meeting Neruda over and over again in different stages of both our lives—that’s exciting.
I love Gwendolyn Brooks—“the mother” and “The Children of the Poor” stick to your insides like polenta. Once you read “We Real Cool,” how do you ever forget it? Victoria Chang is a contemporary favorite. Her poetry collection, OBIT, is a series of obituaries that she wrote after losing her mom. She wrote the collection in just two weeks, which is wild! She’s a genius. And she gifts us this stunning bible for how to process grief.
I get made fun of for this sometimes (and I’m not sure why?), but I get a kick out of the beat poets, and Gregory Corso is my favorite. I love “The American Way.” I feel like Corso could be your bratty little brother in another lifetime, sardonic on the surface but deep all the way through. Although she isn’t a poet, Joan Didion’s conciseness and voice has always spoken to me. Every once in a while, she wrote a line like “I know what ‘nothing’ means, and I keep on playing,” which is from Play It as It Lays, and I have to put her book down and live with her words for a few minutes before I move on.
Poet Donna Masini, who was my professor at Hunter College back in the day, captures what it feels like to grow up in an Italian, working-class home in the city. Oh my goodness, I remember how she would float into class with her dark hair pinned up, a long skirt, and just start reading a poem aloud. The cars would be honking their horns on Lexington Avenue, there was no air-conditioning in the classroom, your bare thighs stuck to the seats, and she would keep reading like it was the only thing that mattered on Earth. Just a goddess to a 19-year-old kid from Queens. Masini’s poetry collection, 4:30 Movie, is also about grief, and it weaves in references like Pride and Prejudice, the Angelica movie theater in NYC, and anxiety, using ants as a metaphor. It’s perfect.
I’m crazy about art and try to visit museums whenever I can. Recently at the Met, I viewed Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck’s body of work, including a series of self-portraits spanning her youth to just a few days before her death. Her later-day portraits, in which she appears almost like a ghost figure, put me in a spell. I hope when I’m an old woman, I will be as brave as Schjerfbeck and reveal myself fully.
EG: Lisa, thanks so much for talking to me about your work. Please tell our readers where they can find out more about you, and if you have something in the works that you’d like to talk about, please share it! Good luck with everything you are doing, and please keep writing poetry!
LF: It’s really an honor, Elizabeth—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m superstitious and won’t talk about anything I’m doing before it’s done, but I am probably most active on Instagram. My handle is @lisacfogarty. Although Diana and I took a break from our podcast, we have 75 episodes that are a great resource for anyone struggling with eating disorders and body image issues, so please check out The Hunger Trap Podcast on Apple or Spotify.
Walking to Kate’s
Walking to Kate’s—
vanilla sweat,
underarms, learning early
which parts of a body
announce themselves.
Strawberries-and-cream drinks
smuggled into class,
Shakespeare spoken—
this doesn’t even
sound like English.
Kisses, hugs,
three girls claim
one shadow.
A trampoline,
a chipped tooth,
learning how blame
moves sideways.
The girl got her first period
when a man turned sixty-one
and bought his ninth
investment property
in the Caymans—
accumulation on schedule,
bodies arriving
right on time.
Hates her thighs in cut-offs,
but that’s all stores sell
this season.
Steps into seventy degrees,
sunlight
with no place to hide.
Walks alone to Kate’s
and the old car follows.
Those shorts
are a choice.
Leans out the window—
old face like her father’s,
but eyes on fire.
Sneers:
“I want to taste you.”
Covers tummy with arms.
Head down.
Shrink, baby.
Bare skin calls like meat
to something circling—
called nothing,
later
a misunderstanding.
Somewhere above this street:
laws written loosely,
men protected carefully,
silence that grants permission,
courage trickling down
to an old car
moving slowly.
From the poet:
As I watch my teenage daughter move through the world, at moments with confidence and joy and at other times appearing as if she wants to shrink, I remember how it felt to be a young girl whose existence could feel erased by one vulgar comment shouted from a car. The Epstein files is a painful reminder that abusive men are often protected, and that kind of courage trickles down from the most powerful men to those who lack power but find it in controlling a young girl’s view of her own body.
Movie
I replay you in my head, the same five frames, edges frayed like old celluloid, the remaining reel cut and lying on the floor. The beach—a boulder, fingers trailing sand along a shirt collar. Ice-cream melting from the time it takes your “a” to become an “o,” you and your cathedral-veil vowels hovering above Cascais.
You exist once, a half-someone, and I fill in the blanks with forever footage: vines birthing black grapes, and you graduating, a laurel wreath crowning triumph.
The picture dissolves.
I hunt our soft-focus past, searching for you in walls and closets, and none of the cathedrals have heard your voice. You, in forever’s clothes, wait to pick up where I shot shrapnel.
Cut. Rewind.
From the poet:
I miss so many people. They enter my life and feel like they’ll stay forever, but it isn’t possible. They leave in the middle of the movie, and sometimes I want to press rewind, feel and learn them again.
Strong Bones
The nurturing
Poetessing,
water heater negotiating
wasp-killing, bee-saving
halloumi-grilling
Do you want us to grill your vegan meal separately? asking
the dog-epilepsy whispering,
kid-swollen-lymph-nodes worrying,
piece-of-cheese-fell-behind-the-fridge worrying.
The opposite of Marcus Aurelius.
Nothing here is meant to be light.
Deadlifting eighty pounds
to save her bones
from menopause.
From the poet:
Being a woman feels exhausting, difficult, and very beautiful and fulfilling, all on the same day.
Wild Things
The night
Whitney Houston’s sequins
startled beasts
masquerading as souls
along the Long Island Sound
Boys with boats led us
behind gates,
where adults rattled
bones to beats,
like waning moons
anchored to skies.
In and around the ghost house,
moms drank Chablis
until everyone was beautiful,
but no one was kind.
At the place where the wild things were,
a married man followed me to the bathroom.
“Are you—?” he asked.
He sniffed City College on my sweater
and thought he could have me.
He grabbed.
I fled
to the garden above the Sound,
where ghost wings trembled
and the undead waited
for their Zeus gift,
unearned.
Above, Whitney descended
from a helicopter hatch,
sequins catching the dying light.
“And now,” she said,
“Let the wild rumpus start.”
Her voice fractured at high notes,
bone contients etched
into shoulder blades.
The women—seasoned students of bones—
performed their concern.
Even unraveling,
her beauty shocked us.
I, beige-butcher-bloodline-me
felt complicit
watching them make Whitney
leap for bills.
Sing.
Higher.
Sparkle, Whitney.
Catch the day in your sequins.
Gift it back to us.
I stayed, a child
with a boy from the North Shore
wearing Birkenstocks like bluffs
because boats were in windows.
“Drugs?”
They asked later, sealed
into the night of their private room.
“Such a shame.
I hope she was cheap.”
From the poet:
When I was 20, I dated a boy from the North Shore of Long Island and discovered his family and friends were wealthy. He took me to a party where the adults felt reckless and detached from reality, and especially from their children. A helicopter appeared out of nowhere, and Whitney Houston, who was battling a drug addicition at the time, stepped out and onto a wooden plank set up in the garden. Her performance was shaky, and the experience felt exploitive. Whenever I think about that night, the book Where the Wild Things Are comes to mind, so I borrowed some of its memorable phrases to use in my poem.
Flapper Press is always open to new content that provides a unique voice or perspective. We are currently accepting SUBMISSIONS for every category on Flapper Press. If you have questions or would like to submit your work, please carefully review our Submission Guidelines and contact us at: info@flapperpress.com
Comments