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The Irony of Being a Student

Cole Sterling July 8, 2011 1 Comment

Cole Sterling

True difficulty lies not
           In school, or staying involved,
           Or scoring well on tests.
Time and dedication are mandatory.
Everyone can distinguish black from white,
And everyone can sculpt something from clay.
           But being able to paint the empty spaces with color,
           Fill the cracks with laughter and passion and spirit–
           Such an art is easily forgotten,
           Or easily ignored.
Rhodopsin alone could suffice for reading resumes,
So why waste the time developing a genuine heart?

True difficulty lies
           In learning when to slow down–
           When to surrender yourself to life’s passions and wonders,
           When to paint or skydive or even just breathe.
           When to enjoy whatever you have at this very moment.
True difficulty

First Visit

Allan Peterkin June 17, 2011 No Comments

Allan Peterkin

He told me
in passing
somewhere in the list
of bad luck and
bad choices
all the things
that had somehow
brought him here

This telling
was so soft
as to be dream-like
that
she had
fallen
off a ride
at the county fair
on a day he
was trying to be her dad
Didn’t make it
was all he said
then moved on
to the next wreck
(the first divorce)

I didn’t ask
what I wanted to
how old
was it a rollercoaster
how?

This
one thing
carried
all the weight

This
is where
I put my pen down

Where I looked in his face
and

ICU

Sara Rempe May 27, 2011 No Comments

Sara Rempe

The women moved through silence
like monks through a garden, all focus

and white cotton, soaping, rinsing,
lifting her body to sponge

her swollen skin. We were
there when they cleaned her

of diarrhea, sliding an arm
under her when she struggled to move

she’d groan, suck in, drop–
limbs like thin shoots

of bamboo: rickety and trembling
under a papery sheet.

She’d climbed a mountain the week
before, stretching in the thin pure

air, ecstatic,
as though it were something other

than her body
that brought her there.

About the poet:

Sara Rempe

Unresponsive

Addeane Caelleigh May 6, 2011 No Comments

Addeane Caelleigh

Do the trees, like us, dream
of falling, falling into the earth’s flat embrace
or share the lilies’ dread of being ripped
from the dark earth,
ungrounded?

Maybe they are more like my friend Annie,
who dreams of being on stage naked
but unembarrassed,
continuing her favorite lecture
to the unseen watchers beyond the lights.

I hope my mother, who has been sleeping so long,
is like my friend,
unafraid and doing what she loves,
with no fear of being ripped from life
or falling into the void.
I hope that somewhere beyond the tubes
and beeps and the clasp of my hand
her true self stands,

Pictures

Stephenie McKinnon April 15, 2011 No Comments

Stephenie McKinnon

He came to us leukemic listened carefully said his prayers took his meds showed us his
pictures: wife two kids dog cat baby’s first birthday talked about basketball and God and
anxiety and what it feels like to be hairless and a good patient
He came to us leukemic followed directions read his scriptures took his meds
showed us his pictures: wife three daughters hamsters the kids in matching
Easter dresses talked about running and heroes and how bored his children
would get when they would visit and what it feels like to be helpless and hungry
for food that “doesn’t drip”
He walked the halls daily

Diminution

Howard Stein March 25, 2011 No Comments

Howard Stein

I have read volumes,
Written volumes,
Taught from volumes.
Now my words are fewer,
More long breaths between them.
I look up after committing
A single phrase to paper,
Linger a while,
Note the long shadows
On blackjack oak
In the late afternoon sun.
At times, I give up
Words altogether, listen
To the wind, watch
The winter wheat grow, savor
The taste of silence,
And give myself over
To the speech of the stars.

About the poet:

A psychoanalytic and medical anthropologist, Howard Stein is a professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City,

Averages

Kenneth P. Gurney March 4, 2011 No Comments

Kenneth P. Gurney

The helmet-less skateboarder
with his head split open
never checked his rearview
for the one-in-a-million chance
gaining on him and all of his
experience through
six-hundred-thousand plus
ollies, railslides, and mctwists
makes no real difference
as the EMT scribbles the words

organ donor

on some official looking form
before the ambulance zooms off
toward the hospital.

About the poet:

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. His poetry appears mostly on the web, as he prefers to spend SASE and reading-fee monies on pumpkin spice cookies for his Dianne. His latest book is An Accident Practiced: Poems by Kenneth P. Gurney. To learn more about Kenneth, visit www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

About the poem:

“I witnessed the ambulance arrive and went over

He Plummeted

Nina Bennett February 11, 2011 No Comments

Nina Bennett

He plummeted

into madness
as if into a run
for the Olympic bobsled team,
careened, thrashed,

crashed

into the rails
of his hospital bed,
whispered
about hidden
microphones, a plot
between his doctor and Visa
to keep the cure
for AIDS secret.

Eyes darted
from window
todoor
as he yanked
out
his IV line,
bellowed
about truth serum,
he won’t tell,
we can’t make him
tell.

He had been a nurse, took care
of his lover and too many
friends. Nobody left now
to care for him. He died
alone

in a nursing home
while his support group met
without him, while they
held hands to end the meeting
with a prayer.

About the poet:

Nina Bennett, author of Forgotten Tears: A Grandmother’s

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A Medical School Professor Calls It A Day

Neal Whitman January 21, 2011 No Comments

Neal Whitman

First Grade, long ago:
The bell was rung.
School’s out.
The Last Day of School!
A lie, of course.
The end of summer proved it so.
But today truly is
My Last Day of School.
Today I retired:
took my last breath
as a professor.
But what had I professed?
First, that a preceptor without example is a vain thing.
True teachers dare to be exemplars.
Second, that inspiration is an active process.
A principle of respiratory physiology,
but also a precept of pedagogy.
Finally, a variation of the Shaker saying–
Every breath a prayer.
Every breath a lesson.

About the poet:

Neal Whitman is a University of Utah School of Medicine Professor Emeritus now living in Pacific Grove, California, where he tootles

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Morphine, Pearl Harbor

Ann Neuser Lederer December 10, 2010 No Comments

Ann Neuser Lederer

They do not scream. They keep their hands steady as they shoot the shots.
They run from one to the next, on their rounds without walls.
The troops of well trained girls patrol the troops, their wards.

And they make them to inhale their brew
of Friar’s Balsam, tincture of tree resin:
Pines and cooling mountain breezes in the steaming, smoke filled chaos.
Pliable amber beads, shrines for prehistoric bees,
crumbs for tuneful fiddles lull like opium beds
on the dark, explosive rocks

And though they run around, the nurses are careful.

They inscribe the letter M on the foreheads of those they have dosed,
They make their gentle mark on foreheads doomed or wounded,
under dust and thunder.

About the poet:

Read More »

Semi-Private Room

Jan Jahner November 19, 2010 No Comments

Jan Jahner

Sometimes nectar appears
when stories intersect:

I walk into the room
rearrange the bed-table
and push the pole with its bulging bladder sideways
for a closer look.

Her thinness triples the size of the bed
but her father, with his anxious chatter
feels strangely like my own
and her resolve, that tense control
has a familiar edge.

It feels like all the calories she’s ever counted
and all the sweet things resisted for the last eleven years
have aligned as a taut shield
protecting that juicy place that hasn’t ripened,
urged too early to carry her family through chaos:
after all, her mother was dying of cancer
after all, mine couldn’t manage mental illness
after all, aren’t fathers helpless in these things?

The

Read More »

Life of the Party

Veneta Masson October 29, 2010 No Comments

Veneta Masson

By ones and twos
we drift up to the bedroom–
the women of the family–
leaving the men to mutter
and churn downstairs.
This is women’s work,
choosing a burial outfit.
We have a list from the mortuary:
bring underthings
no shoes

Soberly we peer into the closet
slide open drawers
touch, handle, inhale.
Ah, I was with her when she bought this…
Remember the time?
What about a hat?
Oh yes, she loved hats!
No, not that! someone laughs.
Someone laughed!

We begin to try on, critique.
Soon the room is festooned
with strewn fashion.
We turn giddy, intimate
acquisitive–
a raucous sisterhood.

Next day some are subdued.
We got carried away…
Maybe it wasn’t right…
And yet at the time–
in the

Read More »

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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

The Irony of Being a Student

First Visit

ICU

Unresponsive

Pictures

Diminution

Averages

He Plummeted

A Medical School Professor Calls It A Day

Morphine, Pearl Harbor

Semi-Private Room

Life of the Party

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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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