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Death at a Distance
Your message hung on the phone line
like his striped shirt blowing
in the last wind of his life:
softly and with dignity.
His facial bones,
and body contours
he allowed to be chiseled
to an insubstantial sharpness
by the flow of chemicals and
the relentless labor of his disease:
both polished his body to dust.
Your life that has breathed that dust
for years will, someday,
carry it to the stars,
where it belongs.
About the poet:
Edwin Gardiner, a urologist, was in private practice for thirty years in San Diego; he did his surgical training at UCSF and NYU-Bellevue Medical Center. “I’ve written since my undergraduate days at Amherst College but have had only essays and professional monographs published before. From the early 1980s on, I occasionally wrote poetry, but since retiring I’ve found poetics an essential part of sampling the temperature of my daily life.”
About the poem:
The man in this poem and I were friends for many years. This poem was a whisper of condolence to his wife upon receiving a phone call with the news of his
Medecins sans frontieres — Liberia, 2003
Les Cohen ~
I walk warily,
searching for life
through smoking remains
of a jungle village.
My flashlight beam
slices the black haze
of equatorial darkness.
Was it Suakoko?
Fokwelleh?
No wind, rustle or drum
pierces the silence
of West African night.
Torched husks of thatched huts,
clay walls liquefied,
charred dog skeletons,
feet outstretched
as if running from Hell.
Stench of burnt flesh pervades,
stinging eyes and nostrils.
Soft footsteps coming close.
A small, thin boy approaches;
mahogany face, bright teeth
glisten in the moonlight.
Bloody machete, strings of
bleached-white finger
bones dangle over a tattered
ARMY OF ETERNAL PEACE
T-shirt.
Smiling, voice soft,
he hisses
Give me medsuh,
give me cokayh,
mistah.
No, no,
don’t kill me,
I am doctuh,
take my medical bag, wallet, watch, shoes.
I try to scream, but
no sound escapes.
He slowly lifts an
Reflections From a Senior Citizen
I used to talk of fun and games
Now I talk of aches and pains.
I used to paint the town bright red
Now at nine I am in bed.
I used to dream of lovers bold.
Now if truth be told
The only men who interest me
Are those with a medical degree.
“Why,” you ask, “have they such clout?”
Well–we have so much to talk about:
There’s my arthritis and stenosis,
Hypertension, scoliosis.
In a cozy room, alone, we chat.
We never have a lover’s spat.
So keep your handsome Romeos
I’ll always take those medicos!
About the poet:
I am ninety-five years old, widowed, with three married children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. My first published work appeared in February, 1931, in The Record Book of my graduating class of Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia. It was not until the 1980s that my work appeared in print again. I was a reporter for the Mt. Airy Express, writing on assignment twice monthly and actually being paid! The paper folded at the end of that decade. Again there was a hiatus,
Babies
She tells me she wants to have a baby,
my daughter who was my baby
so many years ago.
Everything comes back to me–
the waiting, the wanting, the whisking
off to baby-earth, that angelic place,
passing through life
with its normal sounds, smells, and sights,
into the realm of women’s starlight, bright
as Polaris, a celestial universe of power,
revolving so far away
that only women with growing
babies under their swollen, milk-gorged breasts
could inhabit this land.
Just for a moment, I want to have a baby again.
My aging body with its downhill breasts
and lost uterus aches to soar to that planet.
I want to feel life inside wiggle its
bowed, floppy legs, delicate arms,
those rubbery appendages not yet knit together.
I want to feel it somersault at
the top ledge of my ribs, understand
that surprising quiet of knowing
something inside me will come…
without him.
Just for a moment I want
every muscle in my baby-battered
body to unite for the same cause,
Cleft
As Caroline was born
the doctor saw
the split
from lip to nose–
purple rimmed,
going down deep–
Deep enough
to hurt
generations.
And the imperfect doctor,
tired of wounds
tired of divisions,
saw the small
wholeness
Chose that moment
Chose tenderness
saying simply,
She is beautiful.
And the imperfect mother,
tired of pain,
held her child,
touched the tiny,
ragged face
Chose that moment
Chose acceptance
crying softly,
She is beautiful.
About the poet:
Jon Neher is clinical professor of family medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle and associate director of the Valley Medical Center Family Medicine Residency Program. He is editor-in-chief of the newsletter Evidence-Based Practice and a frequent contributor of essays on medical education to Family Medicine.
About the poem:
This poem was written to capture the layering of emotions that occurred the day I unexpectedly delivered an infant with a cleft palate. I was new to my career, and this was a novel challenge for me. Since I had no professional scripting
My Evidence
When I saw dust settling,
the road black and gritty,
and noticed the air
shimmering as it lowered closer to the earth
like a soft blanket suffocating
the damp September
mornings that had morphed seamlessly
into November’s
crowded table
of berries, sweets, and yellow corn,
just before the hospital
phoned to say that Mother had called my name,
familiar syllables
caught in her throat,
I’d already detected her leaving
in my own body
and so while she paused
at the end of her journey,
which was also the beginning,
I rushed to her,
hurrying
as I’d never hurried before.
About the poet:
I work as a nurse practitioner at Sacred Heart University’s health center. I’ve been writing since my childhood, encouraged by my mother who loved poetry, and my father, a writer himself, who would type up the first few sentences of a story and ask me to finish it. I’ve never stopped writing since. My latest book is The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the
Reading Entrails
Sugar poisons
ruin your blood,
runs your legs
while you sleep,
revs your irregular
heart beat.
Maple sap, tree ripened
orange, dark chocolate,
honey dripping
from the comb
are not viable substitutes;
only abstinence
and the eleven day
skin crawl withdrawal.
Or an asymmetrical death:
one part at a time,
organ by organ,
memory fog,
the surgeons gnawing
like rats
at the leper’s limbs.
About the poet:
Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, where he hosts a poetry salon at his home twice a month. His poetry mostly appears on the Web. His has two self-published poetry books, Writers’ Block and Greeting Card. Other pleasures he enjoys: baseball, bicycling, hiking the desert and foothills trails, Scrabble and good conversation. Gurney’s Web site is www.kpgurney.me.
About the poem:
“A few people I know are/were in denial about their adult-onset diabetes. So I wrote and performed this piece a couple of times in public in the hope of jarring them into taking care of themselves. One of these people did go through
First Cadaver
He presses the Sawzall to
her chest, slices skin to bone.
This unzipping of skin does
not stop our breaths–we’re used to
invasion of the body,
the way his fingers pinch
into her pockets as though
for a cloth or a quarter.
Grasping bone ends, he spreads
her pinkish ribs, not breaking
a sweat, to find what he’s come
for: such a small thing, really,
he plucks it easily.
Fingers bloodied, he holds out
the heart to us: take it, see,
it is no bigger than your fist.
About the poet:
Shanna Germain is a poet by nature, a short-story writer by the skin of her teeth and a novelist-in-training. Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications such as the Absinthe Literary Review, American Journal of Nursing, Best American Erotica, McSweeney’s and Salon. You can see more of her work on her website, yearofthebooks.wordpress.com.
About the poem:
First Cadaver is actually one of two poems that bookend my years of working on the ambulance. In this poem,
Chemo Patient
She tried
To imagine herself dead
As she lay on her bed
Staring at the ceiling
With chemotherapy
Seeping into her veins
But she couldn’t
She could only think
Of her husband
And her children
And how they had laughed
When her hair had fallen out.
In order to die
Everything had to stop
Her heart
Her brain
The blood surging
Through her arteries
But she could not imagine it.
Everything
Seemed to be running so well.
She was not frightened of dying
But she had always
Looked forward to the future
And now it seemed
There may not be one.
It was not like her
To look backwards
So she carried on
Staring at the ceiling
And tried holding her breath.
About the poet:
Geoffrey Bowe has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and has written nursing poetry since he trained as a nurse, nearly thirty years ago. His work has appeared in two anthologies of writing by nurses (Between the Heartbeats