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Please For Tonight
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 forests
All of this mixed with the soap
That we shared
That now too slowly disappears
Touch me like she would
Like I belonged to her
Slow, steady, without surprises
Know instinctively when I need to be calmed
And understand when I need
Your lips, your touch
So desperately that I cannot
Live in this skin
Without you
Feel like she does
Strong and slight
Your skin rough in places
Melting into my touch in others
Pull away from my lips
Yet fill my mouth
Your cross brushing my chest
As you rise above me
Melt into me
Sighing softly
Never talking
And for that moment
Completely believe
That I will simply
Always be the one
Please for tonight
Become my wife
And help me to feel again
That my life is complete.
About the poet:
Andrea Wendling is a rural family physician in northern Michigan. When not writing poetry,
Washing Feet
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 I wonder how any of this can help.
While he tells me more of his medical past,
I run warm water into a stainless bowl.
I immerse both his feet and begin to ask
myself what good it does for this poor soul
to allow himself to undergo this ablution.
Silently I sluice the water between his toes
and soap the crusty callous at his heel.
I marvel at his arch and notice how closely
it fits my palm. I know he can feel
this proximity too. He shuts his eyes.
Months of useless layers peel away,
revealing layers useless weeks ago.
Removing the tough brown hide of yesterday
yields clean pink skin, but we both know
this ritual will be useless days from now.
Still, this moment may withstand time’s test,
teaching us each lessons unknown before.
I learn the medicine of selflessness.
He learns what medicine is really
Enduring Guardianship
Sue Ogle
I was cool on the way to the lawyer, we’d talked it all through, no problem.
So why am I remembering the old kauri house where the wiring was dodgy
and I held my breath as she flicked the switch to turn off the power? How can
I do it without her, flick off the switch of life, decide on her fate or my own,
without consultation, alone? What if she goes and I’m inconsolable?
What if she stays and doesn’t know me?
And why am I seeing Durdle Door, that day when the Sea Scouts came upon us;
we were naked, swimming alone, so we thought. Why am I feeling the sting
of the storm on Mt. Aspiring as she yanked me up the ravine?
Why am I watching the furious river trash those filthy trail bikes?
We laughed and cheered; we thought our laughter would never end.
I was cool on the way to the lawyer, we’d talked it all through, no problem.
So why am I hearing the birds in the flax at breakfast time?
Who will speak to the sparrows for me, find out who’s courting who?
Who will converse with the cows, compliment
The Whole Story
Veneta Masson
After she died
there was talk of war
the stock market crashed
the cat didn’t eat for three days
her youngest came home from school in tears
her husband grew a beard.
I do not lie when I tell you these things
nor do I tell the whole story.
I do not say that her funeral day dawned bright
and unrepentant
or that all the sunflowers in the city
were gathered at her wake.
I do not mention the ruffled bride
also in white, waiting discreetly outside
the door of the chapel.
I do not tell how, at the gravesite
smiling children blew
soap bubbles over her casket
and how they were not buried with her
but were borne up and away,
carried gently on a light wind.
About the author:
Veneta Masson is a nurse and poet living in Washington, DC.
About the poem:
“I’m looking at an early draft of this poem, before it had a title. This is my story, I scribbled, and I will decide what truth to tell/what truth to hide. Isn’t it just so? Ask any of us who were at the funeral and we’ll tell you the whole story. Each story will be true, but
Through a Hollow Tube
Jan Jahner
She carries forward the bundle like a giant fish
vacant eyes above wood-smoked plaid bathrobe
hook me as we unwrap his blue stillness
words swim upstream,
I am swallowed by a wave, standing by admissions, heading out to sea.
I left mine on the rug by her sister, curled in cartoons.
Room Four has a gurney and a chair
Stained, nail-bitten fingers slide through silky dark hair
She starts again, how the cabin was cold, how she wrapped him up tight
how he should be hungry, mine holds her bottle now.
One year out from nursing school in Adrenaline Heights
with minimal scales, I sink to the ocean bottom
dark in boulders and rust.
She starts again, how the cabin was cold, how she wrapped him up tight
the coroner’s number is taped by the phone, my knees ache from
crouching
She starts again, how the cabin was cold, how…
there’s commotion in the hallway
She starts again, how the cabin was cold
My words a hollow tube to the surface, I have to keep breathing
The ER’s filling up.
About the author:
Navigating emergency, hospice and palliative-care nursing for the last twenty-seven years has provided Jan Jahner with rich
The Irony of Being a Student
Cole Sterling
True difficulty lies not
In school, or staying involved,
Or scoring well on tests.
Time and dedication are mandatory.
Everyone can distinguish black from white,
And everyone can sculpt something from clay.
But being able to paint the empty spaces with color,
Fill the cracks with laughter and passion and spirit–
Such an art is easily forgotten,
Or easily ignored.
Rhodopsin alone could suffice for reading resumes,
So why waste the time developing a genuine heart?
True difficulty lies
In learning when to slow down–
When to surrender yourself to life’s passions and wonders,
When to paint or skydive or even just breathe.
When to enjoy whatever you have at this very moment.
True difficulty lies
In knowing how to balance the scales–
How to reach the success found in monochromatic TVs
Without chewed-up cuticles and tightened shoulders,
And a cast-iron soul.
Indeed, true difficulty lies
In trusting yourself.
Trusting that becoming the person you’ve always dreamed of being
Is far more important than reaching the position you’ve always dreamed of having.
Trusting that the path toward finding yourself
Will always
First Visit
Allan Peterkin
He told me
in passing
somewhere in the list
of bad luck and
bad choices
all the things
that had somehow
brought him here
This telling
was so soft
as to be dream-like
that
she had
fallen
off a ride
at the county fair
on a day he
was trying to be her dad
Didn’t make it
was all he said
then moved on
to the next wreck
(the first divorce)
I didn’t ask
what I wanted to
how old
was it a rollercoaster
how?
This
one thing
carried
all the weight
This
is where
I put my pen down
Where I looked in his face
and found something
other than pity.
About the poet:
Allan Peterkin is a Toronto doctor and writer. He heads the Health, Arts and Humanities Program at the University of Toronto and is a founding editor of ARS MEDICA: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts and Humanities.
About the poem:
“The inspiration for the poem came from a newspaper clipping about an accident at a fair where a young girl fell off a ride. I started thinking
ICU
Sara Rempe
like monks through a garden, all focus
and white cotton, soaping, rinsing,
lifting her body to sponge
her swollen skin. We were
there when they cleaned her
of diarrhea, sliding an arm
under her when she struggled to move
she’d groan, suck in, drop–
limbs like thin shoots
of bamboo: rickety and trembling
under a papery sheet.
She’d climbed a mountain the week
before, stretching in the thin pure
as though it were something other
than her body
that brought her there.
About the poet:
Sara Rempe is a writer and teacher in New York City. She received her master’s degree in creative writing from Hunter College and currently teaches in the college’s English department.
About the poem:
“I was hoping to point to two things in this poem: the swiftness with which illness can claim a person and render the immediate past totally incongruent with the present; and the experience of not being the primary caretaker when a loved one
Unresponsive
Addeane Caelleigh
Do the trees, like us, dream
of falling, falling into the earth’s flat embrace
or share the lilies’ dread of being ripped
from the dark earth,
ungrounded?
Maybe they are more like my friend Annie,
who dreams of being on stage naked
but unembarrassed,
continuing her favorite lecture
to the unseen watchers beyond the lights.
I hope my mother, who has been sleeping so long,
is like my friend,
unafraid and doing what she loves,
with no fear of being ripped from life
or falling into the void.
I hope that somewhere beyond the tubes
and beeps and the clasp of my hand
her true self stands, with the trees,
looking ahead.
About the poet:
Addeane Caelleigh works on issues of accreditation and curriculum at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She is also senior editor of Hospital Drive, the school’s online journal of literature and art.
About the poem:
“When first written, the poem was fictional though deeply felt. Reworked sporatically over the next couple of years, it proved prophetic of the final months of my mother’s life last fall.”