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Poems

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Poems

Diminution

Howard Stein

I have read volumes,
Written volumes,
Taught from volumes.
Now my words are fewer,
More long breaths between them.
I look up after committing
A single phrase to paper,
Linger a while,
Note the long shadows
On blackjack oak
In the late afternoon sun.
At times, I give up
Words altogether, listen
To the wind, watch
The winter wheat grow, savor
The taste of silence,
And give myself over 
To the speech of the stars.

About the poet:

A psychoanalytic and medical

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Averages

Kenneth P. Gurney

The helmet-less skateboarder
with his head split open
never checked his rearview
for the one-in-a-million chance
gaining on him and all of his 
experience through
six-hundred-thousand plus
ollies, railslides, and mctwists
makes no real difference
as the EMT scribbles the words

organ donor 

on some official looking form
before the ambulance zooms off
toward the hospital.


About the poet:
 

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. His poetry appears mostly on the web, as he prefers to spend SASE and reading-fee monies on pumpkin spice cookies for his Dianne. His latest book is An Accident Practiced:

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He Plummeted

Nina Bennett

He plummeted

into madness
as if into a run
for the Olympic bobsled team,
careened, thrashed,

crashed

into the rails
of his hospital bed,
whispered
about hidden
microphones, a plot
between his doctor and Visa
to keep the cure
for AIDS secret.

Eyes darted
from window
todoor
as he yanked
out
his IV line,
bellowed
about truth serum,
he won’t tell,
we can’t make him
tell.

He had been a nurse, took care
of his lover and too many
friends. Nobody left now
to care for him. He died
alone

in a nursing home
while his support group

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A Medical School Professor Calls It A Day

Neal Whitman

First Grade, long ago:
The bell was rung.
School’s out.
The Last Day of School!

A lie, of course.
The end of summer proved it so.
But today truly is
My Last Day of School. 
Today I retired:
took my last breath
as a professor.
But what had I professed?
First, that a preceptor without example is a vain thing. 
True teachers dare to be exemplars.
Second, that inspiration is an active process.
A principle of respiratory physiology,
but also a precept of pedagogy.
Finally, a variation of the Shaker saying–
Every breath a prayer.
Every breath a

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The Ancients Had It Right

Stanley H. Schuman

In Aramaic scripture*, and Aboriginal Dreamtime.
How else could animal life begin
Except by Divine Breath, oxygen-enriched?
How ingenious! Only two atoms: O2,
Ideal for hemoglobin, mitochondria, 
Neurotransmitters, ideal for fight or flight, for vocalizing, 
For clever humans to shape tools, split atoms, 
Compose opera, sow seeds, harvest grain.

Consider my distress, in my just-opened pediatric office. 
Stumped by Angela, a three-year-old
So panicked by my white coat, no way to examine her.

Screaming, clutching Mother, she knew and I knew 
This wasn’t university-hospital, with back-up nurses.
Instead, it was one-on-one, 
Advantage Angela.

Desperate, I felt for

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Morphine, Pearl Harbor

Ann Neuser Lederer

They do not scream. They keep their hands steady as they shoot the shots.
They run from one to the next, on their rounds without walls.
The troops of well trained girls patrol the troops, their wards.

And they make them to inhale their brew
of Friar’s Balsam, tincture of tree resin:
Pines and cooling mountain breezes in the steaming, smoke filled chaos.
Pliable amber beads, shrines for prehistoric bees,
crumbs for tuneful fiddles lull like opium beds
on the dark, explosive rocks

And though they run around, the nurses are careful.

They inscribe the letter M

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Semi-Private Room

Jan Jahner

Sometimes nectar appears
when stories intersect:

I walk into the room 
rearrange the bed-table
and push the pole with its bulging bladder sideways 
for a closer look. 

Her thinness triples the size of the bed
but her father, with his anxious chatter
feels strangely like my own
and her resolve, that tense control
has a familiar edge.

It feels like all the calories she’s ever counted 
and all the sweet things resisted for the last eleven years 
have aligned as a taut shield
protecting that juicy place that hasn’t ripened,
urged too early to carry her family through

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Life of the Party

Veneta Masson

By ones and twos
we drift up to the bedroom–
the women of the family–
leaving the men to mutter
and churn downstairs.
This is women’s work,
choosing a burial outfit.
We have a list from the mortuary:
bring underthings
no shoes

Soberly we peer into the closet
slide open drawers
touch, handle, inhale.
Ah, I was with her when she bought this…
Remember the time?
What about a hat?
Oh yes, she loved hats!
No, not that!
 someone laughs.
Someone laughed!

We begin to try on, critique.
Soon the room is festooned
with strewn fashion.
We turn giddy,

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Going Blind

Kirstyn Smith

I still dream Crayola:Scarlet, cherry, candy apple; 
Zeus’ breath, Antiguan shallows, Atlantic turmoil, August twilight; 
Green sings lime, martini olive, cypress, spring meadow, life. 
When I woke up this morning, I wanted to turn over.
Of course, you feel the same way.

I had a dream about cleaning my fingernails. I had this beautiful, shiny silver file and I
could see the brown of the dirt. Peach, compost, and ivory. Each nail suffered caked mud
beneath the many split layers, great time and precision to extract the telling debris. 
I worked to carve out the dirt, to rid

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