based on Robert Schumann’s Third String Quartet, Movement 1
Audrey Shafer
We meet in the holding room; a paper dress covers your tattoos
At any moment, your craze of fragile vessels
could spill, fill the sea cave cradling your mind
Your wife holds your hand until
Linda Kobert
Monday, 7:30 am, DR two. I’m circulating,
the nurse who isn’t sterile, the surgical team’s link
with the unclean world. Before the incision,
I have ten things to do. I keep the list in my head:
check suction, position lights, turn on Bovie,
Allie Gips
and for the third time my grandfather grabs the bottle of sparkling cider
and for the third time it is empty and for the third time his face falls
of all the things to forget this is not the saddest
he forgets how the
Pris Campbell
His heart
is a battlefield
of scar tissue
and hardened walls
from radiation.
So certain the tumor
in his throat would take him
to his knees, wrench his life away,
they brought forth
the beast…that fairy tale
Wind scatters leaves as I approach the house.
The geranium he hung lies on the floor.
The same porch board’s loose. The coir mat sheds.
I fumble for the key and push at the door
that opens to guitar amps, music books
and cardboard boxes
Sophia Görgens
The first mistake I made
was leaving my ID card home
in the pocket of my fleece–
the one with a zipper that broke
in Namibia and a hole stabbed
by a pencil during finals, worn
deep with worry and time.
Clyde Partin
The atypical place he wore his beeper
Warranted him a cameo appearance
In an essay I once wrote on pagers
However,
On this spring morning,
He was impeding my progress
As he sauntered across the intersection
In intimate communion with
William Toms
Our train starts to move slowly down well-traveled tracks. Sunny out,
clouds in the distance. We pick up speed.
We offer obligatory greetings,
courtesy How you feelings?
We both know why she’s here
we defer that talk
as if deferring for a
Jack Coulehan
I eavesdrop on the cells in your brain,
which are trying to bust out of a prison
surrounded by broken connections.
They make an almost inaudible hum
beneath mechanical whooshes and pings
surrounding your hospital bed. I listen
while sitting with
Marilyn Hammick
Arthur stops close to where we sit waiting
for the person you call the activities lady
to serve us drinks and biscuits.
He moves his wheelchair with slippered feet,
so we become another group.
You introduce me, This is my sister,
Alan Harris
after my father had his stroke
we never spoke again
but that didn’t stop us
from reading each other’s faces
recognizing the punctuated pauses
periods and question marks
etched in eyes, sighs and sad smiles
It took both hands to
Daniel Becker
During the service, after the mensch acclamation
and before the sermon-sized metaphor
that started with a tree then lost me
a comrade from the morning shift at college–
they shared a lecture hall and the appreciation
that all sleepy students are sleepy
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