Risa Denenberg
I’m no longer part of this operation.
I skulk back into hospital to hand over my name badge–
worn every workday for 12 years. Messy shame shines
on my face like spinach
Norma Smith
How the electrical impulse
begins in the small part
of the heart and provokes
the pumping
of the necessary
fluid, which will carry everything
we need
to live, everything
we can’t do
Patty Bertheaud Summerhays
“They just cut the abdomen like an operation, look in and sew him up. No one will know.”
I know the inside story–the body parts,
the heart, brain, liver, lungs,
kidney, spleen, bowel, and bladder
sliced on a cutting board
like loaves of bread.
The coroner donning
Jennifer Frank
Hunched, shriveled, pinched
Enclosed in the metal prison of the wheelchair
You long to be free, unencumbered
By the oxygen tube connecting you to life
Each visit with me brings worse news
Andrea Wendling
Please for tonight
Just be my wife
She is my life, my center,
She is what makes me whole
And I am finding I cannot exist
Without her
Smell like her
Like hayfields after a day of hard work
lavender and milk baths
Warm breezes blowing through still
Robert Fawcett
Being thorough, I remove a holey sock
to view a diabetic man’s filthy feet.
I use the time to complete our talk
of what drove him to live on the street
as
Sue Ogle
I was cool on the way to the lawyer, we’d talked it all through, no problem.
So why am I remembering the old kauri house where the wiring was dodgy
and I held my breath as she flicked the switch to turn off the power? How can
I
Veneta Masson
After she died
there was talk of war
the stock market crashed
the cat didn’t eat for three days
her youngest came home from school in tears
her husband grew a beard.
I do not lie when I tell you these things
nor do I tell the whole
Jan Jahner
She carries forward the bundle like a giant fish
vacant eyes above wood-smoked plaid bathrobe
hook me as we unwrap his blue stillness
words swim upstream,
I am swallowed by a wave, standing by admissions, heading out to sea.
I left mine on the rug by her sister,
Cole Sterling
True difficulty lies not
In school, or staying involved,
Or scoring well on tests.
Time and dedication are mandatory.
Everyone can distinguish black from white,
And everyone can sculpt something from clay.
But being able to paint the empty spaces with color,
Fill the cracks with
Allan Peterkin
He told me
in passing
somewhere in the list
of bad luck and
bad choices
all the things
that had somehow
brought him here
This telling
was so soft
as to be
Sara Rempe
and white cotton, soaping, rinsing,
lifting her body to sponge
her swollen skin. We were
there when
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