Sterile Field

In this collection, H.E. Fisher experiments with a wide variety of poetic forms as she brings us closer to Earth and to each other. In times when healing and caring are our last hope, Sterile Field is a love letter to our bodies, Earth, and life itself. "Anyone who has had any experience with the medical industrial complex knows how dehumanizing, disorientating, and difficult it is to navigate. In this deeply compassionate collection, H.E. Fisher allows us to experience the struggle of her husband's heart failure and transplant right along with her. We witness, from every angle, the complexities and contradictions of being a patient and a caregiver during late-stage capitalism where our bodies and the earth are struggling to survive. Fisher examines received ideas of sickness and health, and examines the way privilege, systemic racism, and classism cause harm in a myriad of subtle and overt ways. In "Recovery" she writes, "After surgery we learned/ it is the American way/ to live with a permanent wound." Adept at lyric, narrative, and hybrid, and using both found language and medical texts, Fisher has written a book of her husband's heart transplant that also works as a metaphor for our society that is slowly poisoning us and the natural world. It is both a personal narrative and a political call to action. It is an astonishing debut." —Jennifer Franklin Published by Free Lines Press. Cover art by Santiago del Conde.