Through My Marrow, by Makena Metz

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

This chapbook is an autobiographical poetry collection about the author’s decade-long journey with illness and recovery. From becoming sick with aplastic anemia, a rare autoimmune disease that affects two in a million people, to recovering from bone cancer and reckoning with chronic pain, Metz challenges the preconceived notions society has about chronic illness and disability while defying ableism in our culture.

Metz’s poetry pulls from the natural world as well as the supernatural; she uses evocative imagery and metaphor to portray her lived experiences. Her free verse is structured in form and content, supporting her words like a mobility aid. Her obvious craft shines through her odyssey of grief to healing, forcing the reader to both confront and question their own biases and assumptions about medical trauma.

Ultimately, Through My Marrow is a stirring and evocative collection of poems that gives voice to the complexity of medical treatment while intimately representing the disabled experience – which is rarely seen on the page.

Makena Metz is a Writer & Songwriter for the Page, Screen, and Stage. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from Chapman University. Her prose and poetry have been published in over 60+ literary magazines and anthologies. Some of her favorites have been Broken Antler Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, Boudin, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Arkana, and Strange Horizons. She’s represented by her literary agent at Alchemy Ink. Find her work @ makenametz on social media and check out makenametz.com.