Sandra Miller
My left hand is an idiot.
I don’t think it can save me.
Deep in my brain, the old twine of brittle DNA,
the sparks of my memory and blasted circuits,
fizz
Sara Brodsky
I sit with three demented women in their nineties.
Three after-dinner conversations fly,
banging into each other,
ricocheting,
drifting off course.
Aunt Sylvia insists she must call her mother.
Edith announces she
Patricia Ljutic
A flywheel
launched from a brain
that cannot remember
three consecutive words–
two words, maybe:
“Stop kicking…”
The third word catapults with
the what and the where,
changing channels
with every new activity,
leaving my
Jessica Bloom
The young woman’s daughter
is shy and beautiful.
Her mother comes to the clinic
with vague complaints:
headache, stomach pain,
fatigue, weakness.
A small, sturdy woman
with an anxious face,
her square
William Toms
The patient is a 61 yo M with a Hx of NIDDM, ASCAD, HBP, COPD and CHF who presents with chest pain radiating to his jaw and both arms for thirty minutes,
Tabor Flickinger
At the coffee stand as always getting tea,
so always that the ladies see my weary face
and start the water steaming without words.
I hover there with others waiting think through labs to check
imaging to glance at does he have pneumonia or pulmonary edema
has social
Colleen Fogarty
Sitting here, waiting to teach a medical student.
My eyes lock
onto the windowed display cabinet of anatomic pathology specimens.
Aging bottles of shriveled dun-colored parts, pale reminders of bodies once vital.
Daniel Klawitter
Morphine doesn’t do much for dementia.
I know this because my grandmother
was trying to catch an imaginary chicken
on her deathbed.
Wanting to calm her fevered thrashing,
my sister cleverly said: “It’s okay grandma.
I caught the chicken for you.
You can rest now.”
But my grandmother’s
Karen Peacock
He pulled the covers over his shedding skin,
Put a napkin over his phlegm-filled cup
Turned the volume down on the TV
And up in his ear,
Cleared his throat through the foggy mask,
Tipped the seat down to his bedside commode
As he reached for his teeth,
Theta Pavis
They handed me your clothes
the winter boots,
the dark, folded jeans in their
impossible size 5.
I put them in my trunk,
then drove around
orbiting your hospital like a
satellite sister.
Daniel Becker
In silhouette, in pantomime, in slow motion,
she’s dropping him off, but instead of
a see-you-later kiss, they slap palms, high fives,
except they miss–
twice the sound of one hand clapping–
and there they go again: arms raised, hands poised,
holding then un-holding their applause
as they
Howard Stein
(with apologies to Gaetano Donizetti and gratitude to Helen Fisher)
Oh dopamine! Elixir of love!
Beloved catecholamine neurotransmitter,
Child of the hypothalamus–
To you I owe all passion.
In you
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