WHAT LASTS, A NARRATIVE RELIQUARY
~a story of trauma, loss, and love. Always, love.
What Lasts is a non-fiction chapbook, just under fifty pages. The story of a boy loved and lost requires the use of both prose and poetry to be told.
What Lasts is available from Wrong Publishing and from Powell’s Books.
Content Warning: What Lasts does not shy away from suicide, the hard and sad fact of a young person ending his own life. Approach with care for yourself, reader.
WORK IN PROGRESS:
“HOW I SURVIVED” not only cancer, but its treatments.
~a story of living through cancer and then surviving the damaging, and potentially lethal treatments in capitalist America.
HOW I SURVIVED tells the story of my body as it met, and still meets, with toxic capitalism in both the cancer-causing environment and the American Medical Industrial Complex. How I Survived is a narrative about surviving deadly illness in a society where profits matter first, where cancer prevention is antithetical to monetary gains, and where medical mistakes and adverse events hurt—even kill us—often enough to be the third leading cause of death in the US, and yet fail to be systematically addressed.
With no known risk factors (but come to find out, highly polluted childhood water), I was diagnosed with cancer just as my wife and I considered turning from couple to two-mom family. With a hefty serving of good fortune while on the planet of misfortune, I lived to deal with my changed body and devastating effects of treatment. Initially survival was heady and every challenge surmountable. I made my scarred life beautiful. As time went by, parts of my body started to malfunction. When I sought help, doctors searched for other causes for my health glitches rather than face the negative effects of previous medical care, which all the while continued causing stealthy damage. It took a brush with death and a new doctor finally willing to be honest, to wake me to an understanding of the damage I was and am living with.