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During Lunch at Medical Center Hour Today
a developmental biologist shows us a video of a fertilized egg
dividing into two then four then eight cells–
a day’s worth of differentiation in a minute–
followed by a slide of a week old blastocycst drawn in cross section
with an outer cell mass or future placenta and an inner cell mass
that’s either someone already or destined to be someone
with the same constitutional rights as any non-incarcerated citizen,
and while on the subject of genes as destiny the next clip
shows an unfertilized stem cell donated by a monkey at a lab
where the genetic basis of alcoholism is put to the test:
the stem cell donor sits in the corner of a cage, big smile on her face
since she was randomized to drink as much beer as her genes wanted,
and while that was supposed to be funny
it wasn’t as funny as the story of the pope who decreed
that no human eggs could be stored in Italian laboratory freezers,
prompting wily Italian scientists to freeze dry eggs
for room air storage and quick and easy shipment to countries without popes,
but who needs eggs when stem cells on their own can be encouraged
Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter
Cortney Davis
Spring
Thirty weeks,
and the baby’s not moving.
I listen to deep silence.
Then, the pregnant belly wakes.
From beneath the mountain,
thunder singing.
Summer
The final day of OB rotation
the medical student has a choice–
see the last patient of the day
or run to the coffee shop for a milkshake?
Milkshake wins!
What will I say when they ask me
was he dedicated?
Fall
“Why did you do this? Why did you order that?”
Full of indignation, the chief resident
attacks me
like the attending doctors
stormed at her only this morning.
Winter
There, on her cervix, a red spot
like a berry.
Today, I see her again,
shuffling her way to the bathroom
without her cancer.
She looks so much smaller.
About the poet:
Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner, is the author of Leopold’s Maneuvers, winner of the 2003 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, and The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing, winner of the 2010 American Journal
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:
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 top
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 floor
and assemble themselves
into the sonnet
you could never write–
even if your life depended
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:
Husband: …I just got another poem accepted for publication…uh…and you’re in it.
Wife: Am I going to be embarrassed?
Husband: 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 gates
gape tauntingly wide and welcoming. Today will soon be buried:
three wizened men sit rocking, speechless, on the front porch,
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