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Soul Searching

Brian T. Maurer August 23, 2013 No Comments

Brian T. Maurer

Ply the scalpel, crack the vault;
Peel back the layers, parcel the salt:
Galeal, subgaleal, arachnoid place,
Dura mater, subdural space,
Lobus frontalis, sulcus centralis,
Corpus callosum, fornix, and rostrum,
Hippocampus, choroid plexus,
(Anatomy most sure to vex us)
Ventricles: first, second, third,
Cerebellum, stem and cord.

When we’ve exhausted the entire onion,
Tell me, what’s become of someone?

About the poet:

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatric medicine as a physician assistant for the past three decades. As a clinician, he has always gravitated toward the humane aspect of patient care, and for two decades he has explored the illness narrative as a tool to cultivate an appreciation for humane medical

Escape from Chemo

Ellen Diamond August 2, 2013 No Comments

Ellen Diamond

And while the stuff drips in, I’m rolling over
in my mind the two words: Kemo Sabe.

It’s the name that Tonto called his friend
the Lone Ranger, back in radio days.

I could use a trusty sidekick now,
crouched behind the white screen near the door,

ready in an instant to unsheathe
his blade, then back us slowly to the window.

Retrospective

Jack Coulehan July 12, 2013 No Comments

Jack Coulehan

Forty years passed. His body replaced
its cells, with the exception of his heart’s
persistent pump and the mushroom-like paste
of his brain. Only scattered synaptic charts
of his internship remain, etched in myelin,
a few of them deeply. Nonetheless, a dried
umbilical cord connects that powerful womb
to the aging man, across a gulf as wide
as imagination. He doubts there’s a thread
to follow, a blockaded door to open,
or a fusty corridor down which to tread
to a solution: those he hurt, the woman
he killed with morphine, more than a few
he saved. His ally, hope, will have to do.

About the poet:

Jack Coulehan is a poet, physician and medical educator whose work appears frequently in medical journals

What We Carry

Sandra Miller June 21, 2013 No Comments

Sandra Miller

When I was an intern, we carried everything.
We carried manuals and little personal notebooks, frayed and torn,
crammed with tiny bits of wisdom passed on by a senior or attending.
Yet when a midnight patient rolled in with a myocardial infarction
we didn’t look anything up because there were only four drugs we could use:
morphine for the crushing pain,
nitroglycerin to flush open the vessels,
lidocaine for rebellious rhythms,
and furosemide for sluggish fluids.
I’m old.
We had nothing to block the betas or the calcium channels,
nothing to inhibit the ACEs,
no fancy clot-dissolvers,
just the patient and the strip.
Some made it, some didn’t.

How It Was When You Stopped Knowing Me

Susan Rooke May 31, 2013 1 Comment

Susan Rooke

When I cannot help remembering, I recall
that the end of your memory arrived
in a Texas spring so wet it churned the rivers,
ripped white frame houses from the banks
and sent them rampaging on the currents
like Pamplona bulls turned loose into the streets.
There were bridges on those rising rivers, and
I cannot help remembering that I crossed them

driving south, looking down to see the sharp horns
of shingled eaves tossing, slinging muddy foam
in the floodwaters down below. I drove hours

just to get you, because you’d lost the knack
of getting anywhere yourself–a block away,

During Lunch at Medical Center Hour Today

Daniel Becker May 10, 2013 No Comments

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

Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter

Cortney Davis April 19, 2013 No Comments

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

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

Norbert Hirschhorn March 29, 2013 1 Comment

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 March 8, 2013 No Comments

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

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Around the Bend

Rachel Hadas February 15, 2013 No Comments

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.

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The Lone Nurse Lament

Ray Bingham January 25, 2013 No Comments

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

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Here’s the Thing

Martin Kohn January 4, 2013 No Comments

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

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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

Soul Searching

Escape from Chemo

Retrospective

What We Carry

How It Was When You Stopped Knowing Me

During Lunch at Medical Center Hour Today

Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

Palliative Care

Around the Bend

The Lone Nurse Lament

Here’s the Thing

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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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