fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Mortality and Morbidity Conference

Mortality and Morbidity Conference

I imagined something Victorian.
Perhaps I imagined a lecture hall filled with side-whiskered,
Sherlockian doctors, arguing case histories
like gentlemen playing chess with death–
or perhaps I imagined priests,
performing absolution at the bier.

I did not have to imagine the grey
underground conference room.
I was unsurprised at the bitter
coffee, the keening of the projector, the recalcitrant
bangs from the water pipes–

surprised only, perhaps, at the heavy thump
of the mundane: morbidity startling like turnips;
mortality remarkable as rain.

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Rosemary Zimmermann is a nurse practitioner in Albany, NY. She lives with her small child, her cat and an inordinate number of books.

About the Poem

“At my first M&M conference, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the tragic and the banal. As I reflected, I realized that all tragedy is like that: situated firmly in the everyday. We only elevate it in our imaginations. I also wanted to see if I could successfully use the word ‘turnip’ in a poem.”

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