Issue 40: Force of Nature by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Read

When I hear someone talk about “the silver linings of cancer,” I am so immediately turned off by the framing that it’s made me wonder if I’m just disinterested…

Kirk Read, Good morning, Good night, analog collage, 10 x 13 inches, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Force of Nature by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Read

When I hear someone talk about “the silver linings of cancer,” I am so immediately turned off by the framing that it’s made me wonder if I’m just disinterested in being happy.

There is a question that is popular in the cancer world: “If you could go back in time, would you say yes to your cancer?”

I want to consider that this may be a trick question. The “spiritually correct answer” — spirituality less in the sense of looking headfirst into the wide-open gaping maw of transpersonal existence, and more in the sense of viral Instagram memes — is, of course, yes.

I want to return the mystery to illness. The wonder to cancer. The awe of a process of disease that straddles the line of self and non-self, where the boundaries between self and other are no longer abstract contemplations but have real, immediate and fatal consequences.

I want to look at cancer like we look at nature. Not something we say yes to, or no to, or try to have the right mindset about. But something we acknowledge, accept, make room for. Something we surrender to and become students of. Something we yield to. The endless pull of gravity. The sudden strike of lightning. The venom of a rattlesnake bite….

Read more from Force of Nature.

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Michael Nagle is a queer, Sri Lankan-American writer living in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he’s undergoing treatment for metastatic colon cancer. He is deeply interested in writing as a vector for raw, messy, vulnerability that slips under our collective defenses and wakes us up to the more beautiful lives we know in our hearts is possible. And doing this with humor, joy, and wit. Portland, OR and Cambridge, MA both feel like second homes and if he had a choice he would take rebirth as a well-pampered cat.

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Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap (Penguin) and has an essay in the forthcoming anthology Witch from Dopamine Press. He won a Bronze award from Contemporary Collage Magazine for his series of abstract telephone pole collages and was shortlisted for a series of collages done on the walls of outhouses at Wolf Creek radical faerie sanctuary. He was recently a resident at Kolaj Institute in New Orleans. He lives in Portland, OR and co-leads the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective.

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Issue 40 Highlights

Issue 40: Force of Nature by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Read

Issue 40: Our Lady of the Thaw by Marina Gross-Hoy

Issue 40: Yes, I talk shit. by nawa angel a.h.

Issue 40: sporadically present by Featured Artist S.J.

Issue 40: everyday awe by Mayur Chauhan

Issue 40: Momma's Love Itch by Featured Writer Elizabeth Woody

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Artists and Writers

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With galactic gratitude,

Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad

Swim around in KHÔRA.

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