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Going Blind

Kirstyn Smith October 8, 2010 No Comments

Kirstyn Smith

I still dream Crayola:Scarlet, cherry, candy apple;
Zeus’ breath, Antiguan shallows, Atlantic turmoil, August twilight;
Green sings lime, martini olive, cypress, spring meadow, life.
When I woke up this morning, I wanted to turn over.
Of course, you feel the same way.

I had a dream about cleaning my fingernails. I had this beautiful, shiny silver file and I
could see the brown of the dirt. Peach, compost, and ivory. Each nail suffered caked mud
beneath the many split layers, great time and precision to extract the telling debris.
I worked to carve out the dirt, to rid my hands of the everyday work mess that drives my
soul and gossips my menial livelihood.

And I wish I could say that there was

Life, Preciously Poured

Kate Benham September 17, 2010 No Comments

Kate Benham

You pour a cup of pecans
Like a kid catching raindrops
In a bucket.
Careful not to spill,
Your fingers playing tremolo on a
Violin-string cup measure.

Your bed-tucked
Mouth, warm, with
Tongue searching the lips
For forgotten first lines of bedtime stories
Like misplaced glasses, resting on your head.
I read to you, now,
In hospital beds.

Forehead wrinkles stacked
In three creases–
Your crossword face,
Mouth-chewed pencil between your lips,
Scooping for synonyms
As you now scoop sugar.

Patient tablespoons of vanilla
Heaped with the effort
Of standing up for fifteen minutes

Love spelled in spilled flour
By hairless eyelid blinks.

This mother’s day coffee cake
Streuseled with memories of able-bodied bike rides
Suspended in white hospital gauze.
It tastes like

Chirality

Stacy Nigliazzo August 27, 2010 No Comments

Stacy Nigliazzo

I see myself, always
through a stark looking glass

the fun house view of my own face
reflected in the eyes of my patients–

tangled in the bleeding strands
that line the gray sclera of the meth addict

drowning in the pooling ink that splits
the swelling pupil of the hemorrhagic stroke

swimming in the antibiotic slather
that blurs the newborn’s first gaze–

my clouded countenance,
ever present–

slipping even through parched flesh
along the steely glide of the angiocath

glistening in the fluid bag
of intravenous medication

glaring back
from the sliding metal siderail–

twelve hours streaming from my skin
like an open wound in the scrub sink

face to face
in the soap-splattered mirror–

only then,
do I look away.

About

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Dissolution

Jocelyn Jiao August 6, 2010 No Comments

Jocelyn Jiao

the articles went first.
then the pronouns, the verbs,
nouns. they melted away, leaving
only memories of warmth
cradled by salivary glands.
adjectives flutter behind
my front teeth, ready for flight.
only adverbs remain,
curled beneath my tongue–
yawning, drowsy:
the softest words of vocabulary.

the lilt of my voice has left too,
soapy Californian vowels
scrubbed clean.
when i speak to my mother,
she complains of my consonants,
how they have begun
to iron out cadences, climb
over inflections, ride
them into deep sand. she says
only my whisper remains whole.
but not for long;
already the throat whistles.

it all started at your
bedside, when your lips
were parted, straining
to form one first, final word.
a sudden embrace of cold

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Third Party

Mary E. Moore July 16, 2010 No Comments

Mary E. Moore

Tipping forward to escape
the wheelchair’s confines, the ancient one
pleads with her feet, “Go home.”

It’s her companion who volunteers
the Chief Complaint: “Ever since her stroke,
Mother’s back seems to hurt.

Her doctors say there’s nothing can be done,
but I thought that perhaps a specialist ….”
She strokes the old woman’s shoulders.

“Does it hurt here, or there, or if I touch this?”
My fingers probe among birdish bones.
Ignoring me, the patient whimpers, “Home.”

When the daughter’s eyes register pain, I say,
“I’ll inject this spot near her sacroiliac joint.
It may provide relief, in any case do no harm.”

I fill in the charge sheet attached to the chart.
Low back pain. Trigger point injection.
Return PRN. But how should

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Sleep Hygiene

Daniel Becker June 25, 2010 No Comments

Daniel Becker

Outline the night and all its objects
in black magic marker.

The world through closed eyes
needs texture
the way tires need tread,
brains need wrinkles, and hypnosis
needs the power of suggestion–
traction, surface area, and control
might also apply to a cat
buried alive underneath the sheets;
if so, don’t forget the one on top.

Stay up for several nights before
the night you plan to sleep.

Oil the ceiling fan.

True or false: the bladder
is on a separate circuit?

Don’t eat in bed, especially chips.

Snoring + sleep apnea + restless legs
+ hemorrhoids + lumbago =

the human condition. The winter itch
as well would be unfair.

Use pillows to solve or suppress all of the above,
a

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The Disabled Boat

Steve Gunther-Murphy May 14, 2010 No Comments

Steve Gunther-Murphy

Drifting on the sea of disease
in a cardboard boat,

never knowing when the slash
of a spinal eel
will lunge from its coral-bone cave
and cut through
the threads
of a once dancing ankle
or the push of a thigh
singing race or run.

Waiting without wanting–
as the slap of a wave
against the paper-thin stern
then bow
brings on the storm
that pummels every movement
until you slip into a coma of the wind;

your sails ripped from the mainstay
and the tar between the rails
yelling like the death of a two-year-old child.

You wake weeks
later
and notice
that your keel is

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Triptych for John

Yun Lan April 23, 2010 No Comments

Yun Lan

Part I: The first time I saw you

I met John
without
John,
without introduction.
Cold,
cold,
cold hand.

Part II: Cadaver as Decapod

John was surely a hermit crab, having four small limbs to anchor the body and six long
limbs to advance it. He gathered sea anemones on his back, and weeds in his spiny beard. He bore
stellate scars, the digitated marks of five pointed teeth. There was a constellation of them, surely
from the care of blue spined urchins. The urchins couldn’t make him stay. Did they evict him or
had he just outgrown his home?

Surely, his soft belly was turned out to the brine, the ocean full of predators. In each eye of
many lenses, what

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Depression Session

Abby Caplin April 2, 2010 No Comments

Abby Caplin

The chopped apple of her father’s eye,
She tastes the grapes of her mother’s drunken wrath
The barely visible slivers of silver-tongued almond
Needle her intestines as she savors
The seedless watermelon of fruitless friendships,
And endures the hard rind
Of a body gone awry,
To be chewed and chewed until swallowed or
Spat out. A salad of sorts
Surrounded by lemons
Home-grown, organic, bitter
And full of juice. She brings me a tough
Clear plastic bag filled with them
To our session.
“They’re the last of the season,” she tells me.
I pray this is true,
While at home, I pore through cookbooks,
Searching for yet another recipe.

About the poet:

Abby Caplin MD MA practices mind-body medicine and counseling

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In the Pediatric Ward

Tess Galati March 12, 2010 No Comments

In this forest of tubes and bottles,
Children wander in sleep.
A dying bird drops
From the corner of my eye.
The night nurse floats through paths
Tending the rooted tubes,
Weighing the pause between breaths.
In the dark, a man’s voice
Stuns like a hunter’s gun.
We wait for dawn.

Last night we cried–four worn children
Facing their walls, and I,
Handing out animal crackers.
Willow’s bones are flaking
John’s eye refuses light
Paige’s ears close up and
Something is eating the soft parts of
Adam’s knee.
We know these things and we cry.

The children force the beds to do acrobatic tricks.
They’ve

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Death at a Distance

Edwin Gardiner February 19, 2010 No Comments

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

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Medecins sans frontieres — Liberia, 2003

Les Cohen January 29, 2010 No Comments

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

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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

Tag: poems/poetry

Going Blind

Life, Preciously Poured

Chirality

Dissolution

Third Party

Sleep Hygiene

The Disabled Boat

Triptych for John

Depression Session

In the Pediatric Ward

Death at a Distance

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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

Tag: poems/poetry

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