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Memento Mori

Craig W. Steele December 14, 2012 No Comments

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

for the Ten Days

Madeleine Mysko November 2, 2012 No Comments

Madeleine Mysko

We say goodbye, her hand goes up (but not
in time to catch me), then the breach: I kiss
my mother on the cheek. Oops, I say,
you’d better wash your face. We laugh, of course–
that’s the better way to make it through
the chemotherapeutic calendar.
But it’s no joke. Her white cell count is low.
I see my mother back away from me.

I’m treacherous. I’ve not observed the Ten
Solemn Days of Abstinence. Oh what
to do but put a finger to the lips,
and teach the mouth never to kiss, never
to take a breath, or utter Mother, while
stepping lightly past your door, O Death.

About the poet:

Madeleine Mysko is a registered nurse and a graduate of The Writing

For Dr. WCW

Randall Weingarten October 12, 2012 No Comments

Randall Weingarten

Williams brought over a bag of plums,
A tree of white blossoms,
A locomotive
And images of
Her threadbare ankles

I’ve loved his poems
The pages are all
Dog-eared now,
Tear-stained
Or smiling

I know this woman
Sitting at the window
The child on her lap
The tears on her face

And that old woman
With her bag of plums
So sweet, so tasty

I know that attic of despair
The hooks of her gown
Undone,
The whisper of
Silk and cotton
Falling to the floor
Her veined body emerging
From the tangles

How I have labored
With him
On those dark nights
In Paterson
The women

Fleeing Alzheimer’s

Sandra Miller September 21, 2012 No Comments

Sandra Miller

My left hand is an idiot.
I don’t think it can save me.

Deep in my brain, the old twine of brittle DNA,
the sparks of my memory and blasted circuits,
fizz and fray.
The spiral staircase twists, leading nowhere.

They say learn something new
so I rouse the dormant piano and try to
find the stretch, learn the reach
but my left hand bangs out sour notes and
my right hand, my anchor, derails in dismay.

She haunts me, she follows me, she plucks at my sleeve …
I won’t turn and look
at her chickadee eyes and empty-gourd head,
fumbling at spoons, hair gone askew.

Reentry

Sara Brodsky August 31, 2012 No Comments

Sara Brodsky

I sit with three demented women in their nineties.
Three after-dinner conversations fly,
banging into each other,
ricocheting,
drifting off course.
Aunt Sylvia insists she must call her mother.
Edith announces she works for her father.
Mimi declares she has two daughters.
I grab onto this shooting star.
“Where do your daughters live?” I ask.
Mimi closes her eyes, and I watch
as the star’s tail
evaporates.

Edith says she starts work early the next morning.
My aunt frets, “We’re the only people left.”
Mimi declares she has two daughters.
I try. I ask, “What are their names?”
She shuts her eyes and loses the light.

“You

ADHD

Patricia Ljutic August 10, 2012 No Comments

Patricia Ljutic

A flywheel
launched from a brain
that cannot remember
three consecutive words–
two words, maybe:

“Stop kicking…”

The third word catapults with
the what and the where,
changing channels
with every new activity,
leaving my son aimless,
scattering stones,
snapping twigs,
belching at turned heads,
spinning.

“S-T-O-P!”

What does stop mean with his
thoughts ajar?
ADHD: attention
without a footpath,
a train without a brake.
Ignoring directions,
my son’s frontal lobe sputters
–winds and unwinds–
toggling like a switch
that switches…that switches…that switches,
careens him into space.

Spinning.

About the poet:

Patricia Ljutic, a registered nurse, is director of the Home Health and Hospice Quality program at Vallejo Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospital,

Presentation

William Toms June 29, 2012 No Comments

William Toms

The patient is a 61 yo M with a Hx of NIDDM, ASCAD, HBP, COPD and CHF who presents with chest pain radiating to his jaw and both arms for thirty minutes, accompanied by diaphoresis, SOB and nausea. PE shows bibasilar rales, generally regular rhythm with frequent ectopy, an S3 gallop, 2+ JVD, liver edge 10 cm below RCM, 2+ edema. EKG shows Q’s V 1-4, STE V 3-6; CXR shows cardiomegaly and basilar congestion. Initial CPK and troponins are elevated…

and his wife is in the waiting roomterrified
and his children are on the wayworried
and his dog is at homeconfused
and his flowers are in

In Line at the Hospital Coffee Stand

Tabor Flickinger June 8, 2012 No Comments

Tabor Flickinger

At the coffee stand as always getting tea,
so always that the ladies see my weary face
and start the water steaming without words.

I hover there with others waiting think through labs to check
imaging to glance at does he have pneumonia or pulmonary edema
has social work found her a nursing home will his family want a feeding
tube despite his end-stage dementia did I order cytology on that peritoneal
fluid when will I next see the sun it’s so

“Oh, did you take care of him before? He’s dead.”

unnatural in here fluorescent
now where was I peritoneal fluid hey I wonder who is dead

“Yes, I heard. We all had him at some point.
He was in the hospital

The Hallway

Colleen T. Fogarty May 18, 2012 No Comments

Colleen Fogarty

Sitting here, waiting to teach a medical student.

My eyes lock
onto the windowed display cabinet of anatomic pathology specimens.

Aging bottles of shriveled dun-colored parts, pale reminders of bodies once vital.

My thoughts drift
my rib pain, localized, continuous, nagging.
my breast cancer, localized, excised, treated…just over a year ago.

What pains my rib?

Mets?
Muscles?

These tumor specimens cut too close.

I got my daughter to kindergarten; what about sixth grade?

About the poet:

Colleen Fogarty, an associate professor in the University of Rochester Department of Family Medicine, has dabbled in poetry and prose most of her life. Medical school temporarily killed her creative muse.

Catching Chickens

Daniel Klawitter April 27, 2012 No Comments

Daniel Klawitter

Morphine doesn’t do much for dementia.

I know this because my grandmother

was trying to catch an imaginary chicken

on her deathbed.

Wanting to calm her fevered thrashing,

my sister cleverly said: “It’s okay grandma.

I caught the chicken for you.

You can rest now.”

But my grandmother’s faded blue eyes

suddenly sprang wide open, and fixing my surprised

sister with a stern and lucid glare, declared:

“No you did NOT!”

And I’m still uncertain which came first:

our nervous laughter or the shock of her clarity,

so unexpected, we almost died.

I guess we all have to catch our own chickens,

before we cross the road and reach that other side.

About the poet:

Daniel Klawitter is an ordained deacon in the

You Don’t Have to Put Your Teeth in for Me

Karen Peacock April 6, 2012 No Comments

Karen Peacock

He pulled the covers over his shedding skin,
Put a napkin over his phlegm-filled cup
Turned the volume down on the TV
And up in his ear,
Cleared his throat through the foggy mask,
Tipped the seat down to his bedside commode
As he reached for his teeth,
And I said, You don’t have to put your teeth in for me.

About the poet:

Karen Peacock is a board-certified art therapist working on the palliative care unit at the Memphis VA Medical Center. She received her master’s in art therapy from Pratt Institute in 2008.

About the poem:

“This poem was inspired by an experience I had with a patient on the palliative care unit. He seemed to

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

Memento Mori

for the Ten Days

For Dr. WCW

Fleeing Alzheimer’s

Reentry

ADHD

Presentation

In Line at the Hospital Coffee Stand

The Hallway

Catching Chickens

You Don’t Have to Put Your Teeth in for Me

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

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Tag: poems/poetry

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