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My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father
Norbert Hirschhorn
He considered the wasted moult of a once
large, ferocious creature: mouth agape,
muscles twitching with every rattled breath.
Agapé–my friend the scholar marveled
at the homograph, and the thing that feasted
on his father. He laid a futon at the foot
of the high white bed, some books, a laptop,
a thermos. Nearby, an emesis basin,
dentures, bedpan, glass half-full of beaded water.
Palliative Care
Stacy Nigliazzo
When I cut the stem
I knew it was just a matter of time.
I cleared the sill
and filled a crystal vase.
The petals unfurled.
The smell of summer pierced my skin
for three days.
When the first leaf fell
I added lemon pulp and crushed
an aspirin;
cut away all that waned–
the shoots were spry
one last day.
I scattered them over green earth.
Flecks of pollen
stained my lips and cheekbones.
About the poet:
Stacy Nigliazzo is an ER nurse. Her poems have appeared in Pulse, JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review and the Cancer Poetry Project (second edition), and an upcoming book of her poetry will be published this fall by Press 53 (North Carolina). She is a graduate of Texas A&M University and a recipient of the Elsevier Award for Nursing Excellence.
About the poem:
“I was arranging a vase of Stargazer lilies when it occurred to me that they began the process of dying as soon as they were
Around the Bend
Rachel Hadas
“You see, the world is coming to an end,”
she says. We’re on the porch; our rockers creak.
Tomorrow vanishes around a bend.
For fifty years she’s been a family friend
whom I should really visit once a week,
now that the world is coming to an end.
I reach out; put my hand over her hand.
We sit and for a moment do not speak.
A rapid shadow slides around the bend
beyond which I’m not keen to understand
what lies in wait. For her, though, every look
confirms the world is coming to an end,
as if we’re inchlings in a giant land-
scape, pulled helplessly toward some black
cavity where the road takes a sharp bend.
We rock. She sighs. Talk of the future: banned.
The past? That’s out too: obsolete, antique.
Marooned in now, she contemplates the end,
leaning a little into that last bend.
About the poet:Â
Rachel Hadas is the Board of Governors professor of English at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, where she has taught for many years. Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia and Poetry (Paul Dry Books, 2011) and a poetry collection, The Golden Road (Northwestern University Press, 2012),
The Lone Nurse Lament
Ray Bingham
The supervisor called, she’s pulling Noel to Peds,
Where, she says, they’ve got really pressing needs.
And Nadia, poor girl, must float to 12 East,
To face the scourge of the adult med-surg beast.
Though the administrators won’t admit to a nursing shortage,
When the census hits the rapids, they attempt this portage.
So here in our quaint little Newborn ICU,
I’m left for the shift with two nurses too few.
The ward clerk’s on holiday, the housekeeper’s sick.
The supervisor’s advice? Make the best of it.
So with a babble of babies to care for alone,
I’ll empty the linens while I answer the phone.
I’ll suction one baby while I tube-feed another,
Hoping my catheters don’t get crossed in the bother.
While I mix special formula, I’ll hang TPN*,
Then gather antibiotics from the pharmacy bin,
I’ll round up the mothers for the baby bath class,
Then while I have them, teach breastfeeding en masse.
I’ll run to alarms wherever they beep,
So they won’t disturb all my little ones’ sleep.
Check all the IV sites, write notes in the
Here’s the Thing
Martin Kohn
There are certain days
when death is just
not appropriate
When the mock orange blossoms
scent through the window
next to your sleeping son
When your wife stands naked
at the topÂ
of the stairs
When the day stretches inside out
and the city vibrates in doo wop
riffs and arpeggios
When the scraps of paper
each containing a random word
fall to the floorÂ
and assemble themselves
into the sonnet
you could never write–
even if your life dependedÂ
on it
About the poet:
Martin Kohn is director of the medical humanities program at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Ethics, Humanities and Spiritual Care, and an associate professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. With Carol Donley he co-founded the Center for Literature and Medicine at Hiram College and was a co-founding editor of the Literature & Medicine series at Kent State University Press. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and electronic journals.
About the poem:Â
Husband:Â …I just got another poem accepted for publication…uh…and you’re in it.
Wife:Â Am I going to be embarrassed?
Husband:Â Well, you’re naked.
Wife (thirty minutes later, having read the poem): You have such a good imagination…I love it…It’s
Memento Mori
Craig W. Steele
Quo Vadis Nursing Home haunts the east side of Erie Street,
squatting opposite Roselawn Cemetery, whose wrought-iron gatesÂ
gape tauntingly wide and welcoming. Today will soon be buried:Â
three wizened men sit rocking, speechless, on the front porch,Â
yearning for the shadowed marble and granite headstones,
no longer afraid of death, only of dying–suspended
between fear and need, stoically awaiting
the next busload of grade-schoolers determined
to brighten their deep-shadowed days.
Editor’s Note: Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as “remember your mortality,” “remember you must die” or “remember you will die” [from Wikipedia].
About the poet:
Craig W. Steele is a writer and university biologist whose creative musings occur in the suburban countryside of northwestern Pennsylvania, where he writes for both children and adults. His poetry has appeared recently in The Aurorean, Poetry Quarterly, Astropoetica, The Lyric, Popular Astronomy, Spaceports & Spidersilk and at Stone Path Review, where he was the featured poet this fall.
About the poem:
“My grandfather spent the last few years of
The One She Calls Milk
Amy Haddad
Is for pain but has a longer name
she can’t pronounce. It’s for when he shakes.
She is not sure if the shakes
mean pain since these days
he often cannot say.
Earlier when he could say,
he would mimic the circle faces
on the pain chart the nurses held up to him.
He would try on expressions
until he found one that fit his pain.
He would set his lips into a thin straight line
or deeply furrow his brow. “That one.
That’s how it feels,” he’d say
with just a small note of pride for
getting it right.
Now getting it right is her job.
She has to read his now strange body.
She walks the tightrope between calling
the doctor too often or letting him suffer.
When she finally breaks down
and dials the office, she repeats
the drug’s proper name like a charm
and dampens the desperation in her voice.
But when they answer
she misspeaks and blurts,
“I’m out of milk.”
Her fragile authority broken,
she
for the Ten Days
Madeleine Mysko
We say goodbye, her hand goes up (but not
in time to catch me), then the breach: I kiss
my mother on the cheek. Oops, I say,
you’d better wash your face. We laugh, of course–
that’s the better way to make it through
the chemotherapeutic calendar.
But it’s no joke. Her white cell count is low.
I see my mother back away from me.
I’m treacherous. I’ve not observed the Ten
Solemn Days of Abstinence. Oh whatÂ
to do but put a finger to the lips,Â
and teach the mouth never to kiss, neverÂ
to take a breath, or utter Mother, while
stepping lightly past your door, O Death.
About the poet:
Madeleine Mysko is a registered nurse and a graduate of The Writing Seminars of the Johns Hopkins University. She serves as coordinator of the “Reflections” column for The American Journal of Nursing. Her novel Bringing Vincent Home is based on her experiences as an Army nurse stateside during the Vietnam War. Her poetry and fiction appear widely in literary journals, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Baltimore Sun and The American Journal of Nursing.Â
About the poem:
“In the octave of this unrhymed Petrarchan sonnet, I confess
For Dr. WCW
Randall Weingarten
Williams brought over a bag of plums,
A tree of white blossoms,
A locomotiveÂ
And images of
Her threadbare ankles
I’ve loved his poems
The pages are allÂ
Dog-eared now,
Tear-stained
Or smiling
I know this woman
Sitting at the window
The child on her lap
The tears on her face
And that old womanÂ
With her bag of plums
So sweet, so tasty
I know that attic of despair
The hooks of her gown
Undone,
The whisper ofÂ
Silk and cotton
Falling to the floor
Her veined body emerging
From the tanglesÂ
How I have labored
With him
On those dark nights
In Paterson
The women crying out
For dear life
And the menÂ
Tweedling in their outer roomsÂ
How I have cherished
Those white chickensÂ
And the words flung inÂ
The wheel tracks
On his way homeÂ
About the poet:Â
Randall Weingarten went to Dartmouth College and Tufts Medical School and did his psychiatry residency at Stanford University. “My life has revolved around clinical practice and medical education. I have been a longtime practitioner ofchanoyu, the Japanese ceremony for offering