essay/memoir on learning how to take a guiding role introducing friends to Boston's gay leather nightlife scene

Baby Daddy

lyric essay exploring the moving-on after a history of self harm

Calling for Iron

lyric essay hybrid, structured as sequential numbered lists, looking into personal experiences/fears of hate crimes and small-town politics

Punch.

Semi-memoir lyric essay prose poetry hybrid thingy narrating the navigation of gay sex work and my least favorite type of tree.

In the way this cultivar is now considered invasive,

CNF flash on learning that we're allowed to feel angry sometimes. Also yachts.

Kübler-Ross Knuckle Tattoo

Craft essay as staff of Barnstorm Journal, explaining my process of "sketching" the concept of a written piece before writing full prose, offering this option to other writers as a means of organizing ideas.

A Sketch, Not A Plan

Lyric narrative personal essay exploring vice and release, navigating medications/therapy for anxiety and depression, and choosing to leave an abusive relationship.
(This version of "Breathe." is a cut from a larger ~3500 word piece.)

Breathe.

Short fiction story in a style I rarely write. Set in the Green Mountains of Vermont, heavily inspired by my family lineage of French Canadian immigrants to northern New England, and drawing heavily on our family's line of strong matriarchs.

Mason M. Cashman

Selected work