from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" - Cleveland Review of Books

**Zack Darsee & Elise Houcek | *From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson* | Inside the Castle | October 2025**

I sneak under the fence.
Outside my motel-apartment.
I know where Agent D is sleeping.
She sleeps under the ground.
I’m wearing multiple layers of protection.
I hear something.
I organize the wires very carefully.
I organize them to penetrate her nightgown.
Her nightgown is her laminated credentials.
It’s also my chance.
Sparks fly and luster.
Elfbones break off.
My wires reach her brain.
It is a brain of Nothingness.
In there go the dictionaries.
The dictionaries will help.
I did not forget the syringes either.
Everything inside her is dancing.
I can’t help getting a little excited.
Everything inside her is like a wild beast.
She winks.
I go in.

I’m surprised to see the DSVB is here. It’s also like a mirror of architecture. Mixed with a bunch of fairies, snails. Elves stand up for protests, could be, or are fiberglassing into basketballs so beautiful they hurt my eyes. I like the big columns here that crumple into paper. When you breathe. It’s like breath is also silence. And conceptual lighting. I’m home, in a way. But, at the same time, I am very scared. I refocus.

Go to the center elfbone, someone tells me. I have shears in my pockets. There are no shadows so I follow a path marked with blue arrows. I cut along the arrows as I go. Big flaps of what seem like balloon fabric break and flop like skin. It is light bubbling. In the absence of rooms, there are elf demonstrations. A bunch of elves standing in front of projectors and pointing at various aspects of decomposition. They appear happy, but professional. If they suspect me, they are not afraid. Behind their bodies, I see a sun. A sun as bright as a dream. A dream of the sun. I ride along a little cloud until I reach the center elfbone.

PRESS 1. the highlight reads.

I press one elf in the eye. They are hanging out like a guard around the elfbone. Like a slot machine, the eye twirls. Red and green and silver sunbursts running to a single point. I miss my dad, all of a sudden. My ankle-pocket vibrates, it could be him. The elf takes my hand and squeezes. He fits a putt putt tournament into my eye. In here, nothing is cheering. Nothing is winning. But at the same time everything is.

It’s time to go, the same voice tells me.

I don’t want to leave the elf. I have never felt so full. My stomach is expanding, it is bursting into the air. It is become, through discomfort, the very all itself, and is gaseous, indeed. I burp.

All of a sudden, I’m back at the fence.
My supplies are in the dirt, in a circle.
I quickly gather them, a metallic taste in my mouth.
It’s urgent.
But less.
I must go home.
I must eat something.

…….

RECIPE FOR DINNER
Chicken
Paprika
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Thyme
Garlic powder
Cook it.

Then recalibrate my mind. The after-shock is with me, a drowsy shudder in my visuals. A fuzz in my periphery. The chicken tastes like oregano. I feel like wine, kind of lacey. My motel-apartment is strewn with papers. I think of a movie. A movie about chickens on a farm. I think the movie is called Chicken Run. I would like to watch that movie, but I don’t want to be alone. That movie is the dark side of whatever I just saw in Agent D. I need confirmation. I go to the fencepost. Yes, in fact, there are chickens there. There is a farm on the other side of my motel, turns out. Just next to the casino. Wet dirt. Tons of eyeballs. Or poker tokens.

Do I free them? Or do I just watch?

I watch.

They are exchanging them.

The chickens are organizing a game. It appears to be a putt putt tournament, or something like it. A hybrid of poker and minigolf. At this point, I realize my plan has backfired.

I get naked. I arrange chicken shit in little triangles. Then I run to the center. Then I run into the building. Then I run into the store. Then I run into the metal. Then I run into the cage. Then I run into the water dish. Then I run into a shell. Then I run into myself. Then I run into a snail. Then I run into a well. Then I run into a hell. Then I run up the stairs. Then I run into a silence. Then I run into the board. Then I run into my life’s highlights. Then I run into a granary. Then I run into a door. Then I run into a warehouse. Then I run into —

Zack Darsee

Zack Darsee (they/he) is the author of the chapbook BELL LOGIC (Spiral Editions), and pamphlets Efflorescence in Stucco (Earthbound Press) and Anzündkind (Creative Writing Department). Their collaborative book with Elise Houcek, From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson, a lysergic neo-noir poet's novel, is forthcoming from Inside the Castle in 2025. Recent poetic work has appeared online and in print in Blush Lit, Tagvverk, Annulet, Community Mausoleum, Works & Days, and Grotto Journal, among other journals. Together with Nadia Marcus, they are the co-founder of TABLOID Press, a publishing initiative grounded in the poetics of the local. They teach poetry workshops in various arrangements of community in Berlin, Germany, and at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop. More at zoedarsee.com.

Elise Houcek

A writer, artist, teacher, and caregiver, Elise Houcek is the author of the book TRACTATUS (Spuyten Duyvil), as well as a chapbook, So Neon Was the Rope (dancing girl press), and a pamphlet, The Leafs (Creative Writing Department). Her collaborative poet’s novel, From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson, was cowritten with Zack Darsee and is forthcoming from Inside the Castle in 2025. Recent writing has appeared in FENCE, Diva Corp, R&R Magazine, Vestiges, new_sinews and elsewhere in print and online. Her work has been supported by residencies from Art Farm and a fellowship from the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute for Environmental Education. She teaches writing to kids and runs Ludi Juvenales, a poetry, art and games series publishing the immature work of established writers.