Fission

Max Gillette’s Fission is a powerful portrait of life with chronic pain, examining the stagnant nature of illness so equivalent to the stillness found in the heart of winter. Chosen as the winning winter chapbook from Palette Poetry’s 2025 Micro Chapbook Prize, the poems in Fission are stripped back, vulnerable, and teeming with care in its lived experience with daily pain, endless hospital visits, desperate prayers. With sharp, precise language, Gillette explores the conflict between mind and body, battles between needs and wants, and manages to balance the sense of helplessness with quiet hope. These poems flow in crescendo and decrescendo to the upended corporeal symphony of this personal nuclear winter.