Chris Lesher

Lost in Time

By Humaira Khan

He tells me his name but to every other question his answer is the same: a smile, a shrug of the shoulders, and an uncertain laugh.

“I love him all the same, Doc,” his wife of 50 years says, answering the question she sees in my eyes.

He watches her speak, then smiles, shrugs, and laughs.

Humaira Khan, M.D., is a neurologist, mother, nature-lover, and amateur photographer with a life-long passion for the written word. She has a Diploma in Freelance and Writing from the London School of Journalism and her work has been published in Intima as well as in lifestyle and consumer magazines, both online and in print.

Unforgettable Words

By Roseanne Trost

My first AIDS patient. The 80s. Lots of fear. Misunderstanding. I hoped he could not see the horror on my face. Actively dying. Emaciated. He moaned, as I turned him in the bed. “So sorry,” I murmured. I moistened his lips. He whispered, “There must be a special place in heaven for someone like you.”

Shortly after Rosanne Trost, RN, MPH, began working part time as a hospice nurse, she met this AIDS patient. She encountered many patients with sad situations, but this dying young man, all alone, has remained with her through the years.

Weekend Torment

By Susan Golden

Bad news has a way of darting in, late on a Friday afternoon, ducking around the corner of the heavy, carved wooden doors as they are swinging shut, closing out the week and thwarting the ability to respond until Monday morning. More than patience, I need an extra helping of decatastrophization. 63 hours to go.

Susan Golden writes fiction and non-fiction. Her work has appeared in Harmony Magazine and Bright Flash Literary Review. Her writing is inspired by her longhaired mini dachshund, who tackled every obstacle with zeal.

Bowling

By Mitchell R. McGill

My in-laws are avid bowlers. We visit them out west each year and usually work in a trip to the lanes while there. This is a picture of my mother-in-law. I have similar photos of my father-in-law and my kids too, but none of them are quite as graceful as her.

Mitchell R. McGill, Ph.D., NRCC, is an Associate Professor in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS.

Falls Creek Falls

By Laura A. D. Hanson

A brief watercolor sketch of Falls Creek Falls at Lake Catherine on the back of a postcard I mailed to my parents in Louisiana.

Laura A. D. Hanson is the Radiation Safety Officer at UAMS.

Bench

By Faiza A. Khan

I recently visited Montreal and was thrilled to see some really neat pieces of architecture and sculpture. One of them was this stool/bench by the road near McGill University. The perfect place for any student or avid reader.

Faiza A. Khan, M.D., FASA, is the Medical Director of Residency Simulation and Associate Director for MOCA in the Department of Anesthesiology at UAMS.

Artful Puddles

By Corbin Stinnett

black and white, a curved brutalist or modernist building is reflected in water on the ground. The camera angle is low, close to the ground.

Reflection made by a puddle on the ground outside Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas

Corbin Stinnett, M.D., M.Phil., is a resident physician at the UAMS Family Medicine Residency in Fort Smith.

Confluence

By Bryan Clifton

a rainbow is splayed across a floor as sunlight comes through windows in a building on the UAMS campus

Confluence of light and angle, perspective and texture. No rain required.

Bryan Clifton is the senior photographer in Creative Services at UAMS.

Capitol Golden Hour

By Wendy K. McCloud

The Arkansas State Capitol dome is seen during golden hour. Vehicles on Capitol Avenue, which leads to the building, are seen on the street in the foreground.

Zero filters were used.
This was taken with my potato of a phone, a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Wendy K. McCloud, M.A., is an instructor in Academic Affairs and the Manager of the Office of Interprofessional Education at UAMS.

Deaf Water

By Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Why did she push the child
down down in the bath
and hold her there in a womb of scalding heat
to thrash like a fish O why her own,
her first-born bound as the faucet’s silver mouth
gushed with sounds she couldn’t hear?
The mother, entombed in her deaf water,
let go at last and the girl, dripping, mute with fear,
arose, to be drawn naked into her mother’s
remorseful, terrifying arms.

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is Arkansas’s eighth poet laureate. She is the author of Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems, named a semi-finalist in the 2022 North American Book Award of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Her latest is a chapbook, The Perfume of Pain, released this summer (Kelsay Books). Her other books are What a Light Thing, This Stone; two chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House, and two books of lyrical prose, A Welcome Shore and Sketches of Home. Her poems have appeared in many journals, books, and anthologies such as Mid/South Anthology, Slant, Shenandoah, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Century, Words and Quilts, and others. Awards include nominations for the Pushcart prize, first place in the Dr. Lily Peter Memorial Award, first place in the Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest, and others. A retired college professor, she lives in Fayetteville and teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia.