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
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
