by Peter DeMarco Marco Furioso The smell of waste filled the hospital room because his mother’s kidneys had failed after a year-long battle with leukemia and chemotherapy, common vocabulary at the dinner table, those dreaded words with the harsh ‘k’ sound signifying something deadly, but now at barbeques there were condolences for his father and more disturbing words, like arsenic and carcinogens, as neighbors waved cigarettes and talked of pesticides farmers once used in the