By Preeti Talwai

Your rivers are ablaze.
Red serpentine ulcerations
streak the satellite view,
and this corner, here,
flickers like old filament.
Innocent, or arsonist?
We’ll drip retardant
into the tributaries,
flushing them ivory,
a forty percent chance
of containment — at least
for the year, but it depends:
how deep your river flows,
when it dries,
the soil underneath…
we’ve never seen
our methods fuel the blaze,
but we’ve only ever
looked through a fissure,
so what we mean is:
this disease,
an undying ember —
yours, glowing inward —
crackles in a language
we are only just learning
to hear.

Any questions?

I pick one closed fist.
They show me
both empty palms.

---

Preeti Talwai writes from California, where she is also a research leader in human-centered technology. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times, HAD, and Typehouse Magazine, among others, and has been twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

By Terry Trowbridge

The strength of eyelashes
ought to be measured
but how?

Their plasticity is almost infinite.
Whatever the pressure that bends them against their orbital bone,
they spring back in their orthogonal tangent.

Hair buried in a garden is forever fibrous:
inedible, over-wintering the beetle jaws,
mouse claws, sleet hammers, puddle-wide glacial rifts;
sometimes summering in bird architecture,
although we never identify our own hair
or a neighbour’s hair, in a nest’s wefts;
no matter how tightly we, at birth,
wrapped our baby fingers
around our aunt’s ponytail,
hairs are unrecognizable in the wind.
The same eyelash can be in thousands of nests.
Forever threads…but the memory is brittle.

Velocity is no object, nor pressure.
Shed one eyelash, it will not thud nor shatter.
At the bottom of the Mariana Trench
one thousand eighty-six atmospheres give no bends.
Benthic floors are made of billions of tiny eyelashes
Crisscrossed, reinforcing sands,
under crab hoofs and star spines,
the insulation for tube worms and their plasters.

Even lava might not break an eyelash,
the transformation from solid to plasma
happening too swiftly for cracks to form:
ashes assuming the place of snowflakes
on Vesuvian faces cast in stone.

---

Canadian researcher Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, Dalhousie Review, untethered, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, American Mathematical Monthly, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Lascaux Review, Carmina, Progenitor, Muleskinner, Sulphur, Northridge Review, Ex-Puritan, Perceptions, Granfalloon, Literary Hatchet, Calliope, New Note, Confetti, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and more. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for grant funding during the polycrisis.

By Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Go outside at 2:32 a.m. when again,
you’re up but also down, the diagnosis
still trembling in your throat and guts,
no way to find ground until the next
doctor visit or scan, and even then,
what will you really know?

Shiver but sit anyway on a lawn chair
and wait until you hear the barred owl
or cottonwood shake the wind out
of its long and brittle December hair.
This is the world that knows you best.

Go inside and lie down, counting
how many words you can make
out of the letters in the word “hope,”
help, hone, harness, hurt, holding
until you forget what you’re doing.

When, in your dream, you jump or fall off
a swing in your old high school playground,
notice how cushioned the hard ground
becomes in winter when dirt inhales air
so that the earth can expand back out.
There’s so much ready to hold you,
give you leverage for standing back up.

Let the darkness focus its eyes to yours.
Then you’ll know what to do.

*Written in response to Ada Limon’s “Instructions on Not Giving Up.”

---

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Half and One, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, Mockingheart Review, Two Rivers, The New Territory, Louisville Review, New Letters, and dozens of other journals.

By Christopher Fettes

Giant moth fights its shadow,
Battering itself against the garage ceiling,
The day going down to dusk,
The opener’s bulb burning bright.

I pause, waiting to close the door
In hopes it will find its way
Back into the great grey unknowing
Of oncoming night

The season grows short for the moth
And its kind in the latter days of September
Chirping tree crickets remain a background din
Behind katydids’ last creaking

In oncoming winter they will fall quiet,
In some coming spring: Silence.

---

Christopher Fettes was born and raised in central Arkansas, where he lives with his wife and their beloved pets. He earned both a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Central Arkansas. He writes poetry and fiction. He serves as Poetry Editor for Medicine & Meaning and is a reviewer for SLANT. He is the author of a chapbook titled A Loneliness in the Distance Between.

By Andrew Oh

One cold Seattle morning,
I was wheeling out garbage bins to the curb
when an older woman stopped me.
Are you one of the medical students living in this house?
Yes, I am!
I’m a chaplain at the hospital. I love getting to meet our students.
What exactly do you guys do? You pray for people, right?
She laughs.
Here’s how I explain it.
Doctors, nurses, therapists,
they all bring a line of work and skill
to the table. And those are important.
But a chaplain brings just their heart.
She clarifies.
Of course, doctors bring their hearts too,
but they have an expertise they must also bring.
Chaplains bring just their hearts with them.
In that moment, I didn’t care that I forgot my jacket
or that I accidentally wore my house slippers outside again.
I want to bring my heart to my patients, too.
Not just my stethoscope.
When have I done that?
Was it the time I shared my faith to a burn victim?
Or was it the time I brought two warm blankets
to my ED patient who had just asked for one?
Three years and thirteen clinical rotations later,
I’m still thinking about what it looks like
to bring my heart to my patients.
But I’m glad I’m still thinking about it.

---

Andrew Oh, M.D., received his medical degree from the University of Washington. He began writing in college and has since published his work with various literary journals and magazines.

By J.C. Cordova

The battle is lost. It is finished.
Her world without end
has precipitously ended.

A voice declares it:
our attempts were in vain, our best
simply not enough.

The surgeon falters, burdened
by the tidings that will shatter
her family’s hopes; their world

torn asunder as we wipe the blood from her skin,
softening the mask of mortality
that rests already upon her cheeks.

Ringing the room, we standing silent vigil
while her daughters lead their father in.
His tears are falling freely,

as will ours; they will visit in the quiet hours,
coupled with guilt and shame,
with questions – inescapable, unanswerable

except by he who will come to judge us,
we so recently separated
into the living and the dead.

---

J.C. Cordova is an anesthesiologist in the National Capital Region. He adores his family and greatly enjoys exploring the world with them. He has previously been published in a number of scientific and literary journals, including Anesthesiology, Penumbra, and Academic Medicine, with work forthcoming in Ars Medica.

By Donna Pucciani

Hunt the vein,
inject the dye.
Lie back
and think of England.
We laughed before
you got trundled
through the plastic tube
with clangs and bangs
and flashing lights.

Amusement park rides
are like this, and as a child,
I was the one who went on
again and again, screaming,
hands in the air. Now,
once is enough to tell us
if your body, my love,
is riddled with cancer.

I think we knew already.
But as the saying goes,
life’s a roller coaster,
like the one in Palisades Park
that I watched from Joe’s
Elbow Room, twirling spaghetti
and begging my parents
for another ride after supper.

The MRI machine has spoken,
and like the Oracle at Delphi,
gives disastrous and mysterious
news, which I take on faith
but hope to god is wrong.

---

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, Italian Americana, Gradiva, ParisLiUp, Acumen and other journals. Her latest book of poetry is Edges.

By Susan Davis

Somewhere in the deep canvas of a coma you sleep
like a bear hibernating. Others have risen
from deep dark comas, but not you. All day all night not
one muscle moves. Hooked up to every machine with
lights flashing and the machines beeping. At least you are still
alive according to the manual. I see you straight as a board with your
beautiful brown eyes taped shut. They want to stay open. Perhaps that is your way
of communicating.
I think about all the knowledge that rests
in your benevolent brain, yet it rests and remains in hypothermia. The hospital room
is as cold as an igloo. Shorts and t-shirts are my daily attire. It is in the nineties
outside. I shiver in your room because of the cold yet I have goosebumps because I don’t
know where you are.
I try to sharpen my knowledge of a Licox, numbers on the oxygen box. They elude me because I don’t want to memorize what any of it means. You’re breathing because a machine is breathing for you. Denial I’m sure. I even find myself begging to God. If He lets you live then I will promise to take care of you forever.
When will you wake up? They told me this was a marathon not a sprint. Well, I don’t run marathons.
In fact, I don’t even sprint.
Your white teeth barely show because there is an endotracheal tube shoved in
your mouth finding its way to your airways. Is it dark in your coma?
Are you thinking about work? Do you remember our three dogs’ names? How long does a coma last? Doctors told me at least a month. How can you be in a deep dark coma for a month? It is an induced coma. Why do they have to keep you quiet for so long? Somewhere you are in there. I must believe that.

---

Susan M. Davis is a retired English teacher of 28.5 years. She is a constant mentor for her former students. She is married to her wife of twenty years. Her wife suffered a brain aneurysm rupture on 7/28/2008. Susan continued to teach 160 eighth graders a day then she went home to caretake for her wife. In between those full time duties, Susan earned three MFA degrees at Fairfield University. Susan and Karen live in Irvine California with their three pups.

By Madison Primm

Welcome.
Walk in and make yourself at home-
however, you define that term now.
The meeting will begin shortly.

Help yourself
to the refreshments on the table in the back.
They have grief,
arranged in a perfect circle
atop an outdated, yet timeless doily,
iced in a runny, white glaze.

Adjacently,
crystal-like plastic cups-half empty-
filled with confusion
and ice that never seems to melt.

Go on, enjoy.
There’s plenty for everyone.

Taking a small bite-
it’s the toughest, driest,
most bitter food you’ve ever had.
But as you work though it,
the aftertaste turns tolerable.

You sip with hesitation-
the most painful swallow.
Tracing its path
from throat to chest,
chilling the body
to a corpse.

Eventually,
it leaves behind
comfortable numb.

How are others
enjoying the experience?

Looking around,
you see them-
The other members of this club.
newer, older,
and everyone in between.

The fresh members
have tired bodies
and sad eyes
that constantly scan the room
for reassurance.

The veteran members
wear crooked smiles
as they try to comfort the others.
They stand a little taller,
and wear fewer dark circles
under their eyes.

Still,
you search
for what you all have in common-
left, right,
and straight ahead.

There.
There it is.

Our common ground:
we are all broken and lost,
each of us missing
the exact same piece-
a piece that shows
who we came from.

We need no matching shirts
or buttons.
We are easily identifiable,
if you take the time
to look close enough.

We are members
of the club
No one asked to join.
We are members
of the club
no one wants to be a part of.

Poet’s Note: 

In May of 2023 I lost my father, James Primm, to appendiceal cancer and I learned to process my grief through writing down my thoughts and feelings. Although this event is uniquely difficult to endure, many children/young adults experience the loss of a parent. This poem is inspired by those people that unfortunately share this experience and learn to find solace in each other.  Losing my father changed the person I was into the person I am, a person with immense compassion and empathy who was inspired to share these characteristics by becoming a nurse. 

---

 Madison Primm is 27 years old and grew up in North Little Rock, Arkansas. She received a Biology degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and has worked in healthcare her whole life from being a patient care tech at a long-term childcare facility to her current position as a clinical care assistant at UAMS. She loves this field, especially nursing, because she gets to witness the impact she can have on a person’s life. When she is not at work or studying, she can be found running with the UAMS Run Club, playing with her sweet puppy, or singing too loud in her car!  

Madison is grateful to UAMS and the opportunities, professional relationships, and friendships it has brought into her life. She has loved her time at UAMS and hopes to continue a career here in the future.