Roguelike

Mathew Henderson

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781487007829
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Mathew Henderson explores with remarkable insight the unique logics of video games and addiction in his much-anticipated sophomore poetry collection.

Mathew Henderson’s Roguelike, the much-anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed 2012 debut The Lease, melds the unique online vocabulary, culture, and logic of video games with family and addiction narratives, specifically the poet’s relationship with his mother and her struggle with narcotics. The resulting poems are arresting and fresh, mining game mythology, fantasy, and family history, while exploring the rich connection between video gaming and notions of addiction, repetition, storytelling, and escapism.

Though the poems are largely narrative, ultimately Roguelike is less about stories themselves than it is about the psychological and emotional forces that define how and why we make them — how we’re all moved to shape the disparate and seemingly unconnected events of our lives into something meaningful, to make sense of the past and the present through storytelling.

the grind
***

The Konami Code

Was it a Dark Souls note that told me how to tap

the ups and downs and ups and downs against

my thigh until my thigh began to tap them back?

Or was it Jessica, who loved me, who taught me

to unclasp my heart, so it would not fly away but sit,

bent-winged and beating b, a, b, a? Who read Salinger

as I slept until the Glass kids appeared in my dreams,

stood beside my father on the Hillsborough Bridge

in his thirties, when he talked a woman out of jumping?

Was it when Franny turned at the edge of the bridge,

The NPCs are dying! And my dad, who had never saved

anyone in his life, grabbed me at the back of my neck,

said We’re all dying, boy! My sister says that for years

she’s surfaced after every dive in the closet of my room

in Horton Park just after my first panic attack left me limp

on the floor. Even now, after a swim, she drips over

to my body and presses her fingers left-right-left-right

into my sternum, like she could maybe bruise me

well and young enough to seed the sequence.

Like by now, I might wake to find a life unlocked.

Roguelike

We first put faith in the loudest and brightest, in those things

that constantly reassert their own existence. I found a faith

in your voice: a sun of sound. I bathed in it until I peeled.

I believed in the strict cord of your arm, that tight, wicker strength.

---

They speak of you in the Caves of Qud, the tortoise and crab,

the glowfish. The Great Saltback kneels, says you travel in my grin.

In Joppa, you glowed, ate watervine and planned a pilgrimage.

In Kyakukya Village, you supped with an albino ape. You will smell

of smoked mushrooms for months, and I am just weeks behind you.

---

Yours was a hungry faith. An out-of-doors, uncloistered faith.

It may please you to know that my prodigy in this has not faded.

You taught a hyperventilating faith, an IRL faith, a panicked faith,

a faith with follow-through just less than 30%. I once placed

faith in the efficacy of my desires, in the potency of my intent.

---

The Great Saltback grins, says you travel in my kneel,

in the prayers I still queue nightly in your name,

tickets torn by the deli counter. I wish you’d started a map.

I wish that when the Barathrumites begged you to stay,

you’d stayed. They still howl when they recall your jokes.

They smile, fondly, terrifyingly, at your hairless cheeks.

---

Intent, I’ve learned, is impotent. Desire is what we do

when we do nothing. Did you learn this too? Like everything,

it nearly killed me. I’m fragile. There’s that song, how’s it go?

Don’t worry, you can still kill yourself. Did you love that tune

when you were younger? Is it something one grows out of?

I learned all of this long after our last scene together.

---

They say that when you travel, you should like, see the real Qud,

see the Qud you can’t see online. You need a local guide, they say,

to see the local scene, but all I’ve got is you, and your build is shit.

Did you hire local? Travel with a caravan? I think you rolled blind.

If I had come first, I wouldn’t learn to love it here; it wouldn’t stick.

---

The first time I wanted to re-roll, I was six. The squirrels descended

on the orchard like locusts, in a soft-fur, sharp-tooth flood you could

wade in. I felt their legs catching in my throat. I noped the fuck home

before I choked for good, but kept playing — sunk costs; 240,000 hours

ago. Now I see this world seed sucks: too RNG heavy, too pay-to-win.

---

In the deepest part of Qud, in the jungle under the caves under

the...