You often speak to my brother from the bottle
of apple-cider vinegar
fermented for years but saved just in case
in the back of his spice cabinet.
You can tell him how to make your banana bread
and your hamburger gravy
till they are no longer yours,
being generally better.
Pris Campbell
About the artist:Â
Pris Campbell has published free verse and short forms (haiku and tanka) in numerous journals over the years. She developed her love of graphic manipulation of images through creating haiga–haiku combined with an image. One of her graphics was used for the cover of the poetry journal Red-headed Stepchild. A former clinical psychologist sidelined by myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) since 1990, she makes her home in greater West Palm Beach, Florida.
About the artwork:
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I did make that first cut and many more afterward. I didn’t pass out, and eventually my heart stopped pounding when I picked up the scalpel. As time went on, we learned an impossible amount about the way humans are made, the way the pieces fit together. That was your gift to us, and I want to thank you.
Though I must admit, it felt almost paradoxical to learn so much about you and so little at the very same time.
I married him in-between tours of Vietnam as a Navy junior officer, and even though we divorced after eight years, we stayed in touch and saw each other over the years.
When he emailed two years ago to say he’d been diagnosed with esophogeal cancer, I was concerned. But after radiation and an operation he wrote that his first two scans were good, and the doctors were hopeful. He was always a strong man and had been healthy, so I relaxed my fear somewhat.
When I wrote him a few months later, his reply was strange. He just said, “A lot is going on here,” and didn’t sign the note. He still worked as a lawyer, so I thought he was doing well and busy
Pris Campbell
His heart
is a battlefield
of scar tissue
and hardened walls
from radiation.
So certain the tumor
in his throat would take him
to his knees, wrench his life away,
they brought forth
the beast…that fairy tale
of modern medicine
gone wrong…and now
It was a grim night. A man had stumbled, drunk, into the street and been hit by a car. The car drove off, but bystanders called 911. The man was strapped to a bright yellow gurney and brought to the emergency department in an immaculately clean ambulance. He himself, however, was disheveled, soiled and violently combative. He fought. He yelled. He spat. He smelled. He was disgusting.Â
Everyone deserves good care, thought I. My evaluation found him to be merely drunk. I considered imaging studies, but they would have required general anesthesia, which didn’t seem advisable given the man’s condition. Instead, I admitted him for observation. I got to sleep about midnight.
Ronald Lands
His hand-carved pipes still lean
in their rack like a row of saxophones
and fill the room with memories
of black vinyl records, Glenn Miller’s band
playing “Chattanooga Choo Choo,”
a kitchen match scratched
across the bottom of his shoe
and swirling clouds of tobacco smoke,
a tribute to the charred remains
of the man who still lives in smoke-filled
images of when we breathed the same air.
Maria Gervits
I miss Alba. I don’t know why, but I do. She was the most challenging patient I’ve ever had. I dreaded seeing her in the office–and yet, somehow, she won me over.
Alba was fifty-nine, with short, silver hair, a deep, gravelly voice from decades of smoking, and an attitude. She had lung disease, heart disease, depression, arthritis and HIV. She also had a complicated social situation. She’d used cocaine and heroin until her husband had died of HIV. She’d then moved in with her elderly mother and cared for her until her mother died of a stroke. Now Alba lived in a shelter right around the corner from where her father had been shot years before.
The biggest joy
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