Theta Pavis
They handed me your clothes
the winter boots,
the dark, folded jeans in their
impossible size 5.
I put them in my trunk,
then drove around
orbiting your hospital like a
satellite sister.
Daniel Becker
In silhouette, in pantomime, in slow motion,
she’s dropping him off, but instead ofÂ
a see-you-later kiss, they slap palms, high fives,
except they miss–
twice the sound of one hand clapping–
and there they go again: arms raised, hands poised,
holding then un-holding their applause
as they deliver unto one another. Meanwhile,Â
that’s my space they linger over.
A kiss is just a kiss, but this
is a circuit to complete, an orbit to repeat,Â
a moment that needs time
the way a couplet needs to rhyme.Â
Parting is to parking as sweet sorrow is to sour,Â
and more so–trust me–if they’re here tomorrow.Â
About the poet:
Daniel Becker practices and teaches internal medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine
Howard Stein
(with apologies to Gaetano Donizetti and gratitude to Helen Fisher)
Oh dopamine! Elixir of love!
Beloved catecholamine neurotransmitter,
Child of the hypothalamus–
To you I owe all passion.
In you are all the wiles of Venus,
The drunken orgies of Dionysus.
When I fall in love,
It is you, phantom brew,
Whom I truly cherish.
My beloved in flesh
Is only a stand-in
For the biochemistry between us.
Oh dopamine! Sly Trickster!
You are crueler than Narcissus!
It is not even my self,
But my chemicals,
Whom I most adore.Â
About the poet:
Howard F. Stein PhD, a medical and psychoanalytic anthropologist, is professor and
Risa Denenberg
I’m no longer part of this operation.
I skulk back into hospital to hand over my name badge–
worn every workday for 12 years. Messy shame shines
on my face like spinach stuck between incisors.
It’s noon, people jam every hall, every sluggish line,
there are no smiles for me. I don’t want to meet the gaze
of anyone I know.Â
I reflect upon peaceable Christmas shifts,
ham and mashed potatoes in the cafeteria, 3 AM.
Passing comrades in corridors, news matters
only to the extent it might toss a tragedy
onto our shore. Ours is no longer
the operative concept.Â
Task done, on to another line to return
Norma Smith
How the electrical impulse
begins in the small part
of the heart and provokes
the pumping
of the necessary
fluid, which will carry everything
we need
to live, everything
we can’t do without
those impulses
carried forward,
Carried down,Â
around this body’s desire
to liveand move/about
a spark
in a small place.
About the poet:
Norma Smith has lived and worked in Oakland, California, for the better part of forty years. She has worked in hospitals her entire adult life, including a few years as an EKG monitor technician in an intensive care unit.
About the poem:
“This poem was written during the period leading up
Patty Bertheaud Summerhays
“They just cut the abdomen like an operation, look in and sew him up. No one will know.”
I know the inside story–the body parts,
the heart, brain, liver, lungs,
kidney, spleen, bowel, and bladder
sliced on a cutting board
like loaves of bread.
The coroner donning a butcher’s apron
splattered with blood from the last
scrape of blade over bone,
slipping off the scalp like a mask.
The eyes stopping himÂ
like the end of sentences until
he doesn’t feel the frown of brow–
anger as he drills to its roots.
Emotions leaving both men
with a grasp of brain.
A slice of brain placed in formaldehyde
jiggles like a thought trying to collect its thoughts.
Every organ shredded and a
Jennifer Frank
Hunched, shriveled, pinched
Enclosed in the metal prison of the wheelchair
You long to be free, unencumbered
By the oxygen tube connecting you to life
Each visit with me brings worse news
Creatinine up, red cells down
Carbon dioxide rising, oxygen falling
You have a medication deficiency
Once you were adventurous
Living life on the edge
For your generation,
You defied expectation
Now you are ending like
Everyone Else.
Hospital-home-hospital-rehab
Home-hospital-nursing home
Death is next
Your passions now are distilled into
Shopping at WalmartÂ
Lunch at HuHot Mongolian Grill
I have never been
While I recite the monotonyÂ
End-of-life care
Advise hospice
Encourage compliance
Lecture about smoking
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 needÂ
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
Robert Fawcett
Being thorough, I remove a holey sockÂ
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,Â
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
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?Â
What if she stays and doesn’t know me?Â
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
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
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
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