By Matthew Freeman

I promise you that I’ll never arrive
at an imperfect conclusion. I will tell you,
this new Vraylar
is making me feel things I haven’t felt
in twenty-seven years. It’s like
no time has passed and once again
I’m an angry young man. I guess I have to pass
through the narrow place. And I’m abject—
I couldn’t afford a cigarette lighter—and God
surely wants it that way.
I just have to be careful
with my body language, my performative,
so I don’t give anyone
the wrong idea.

I don’t understand what went wrong today
with my diabetes shot
but I got blood over everything
as I danced to the sink and tried to
clean myself up.
It was quite an experience
for a guy so used
to doing nothing.

---

Matthew Freeman writes about his recovery from a dual diagnosis and his time spent at Parkview Place. His next book, Dopamine and the Devil, is forthcoming from Coffeetown Press. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

By Paulette Guerin

Living by the hospital I hear
at any hour the helicopter
lifting someone in or out.

The sky is neither open nor quiet.
The stars don’t turn away;
they are sucked blind in the city lights.

We’ve spent years praying
for those airdropped in.
We’ll never know their names.

---

Paulette Guerin lives in Arkansas and teaches writing, literature, and film. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Southern Review, epiphany, Carve Magazine, and others. She is the author of Wading Through Lethe (FutureCycle Press) and When I First Loved You (forthcoming from Belle Point Press). She also has a chapbook, Polishing Silver, as well as a chapbook-sized selection in the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press). Her website is pauletteguerin.com.

By Cynthia Bernard

He didn’t know where to stop
so he kept going, kept going,
excising strip after strip,
two millimeters at a time.
He wanted a clear margin,
he wanted, for her,
all of this to be over,
so he cut and he swabbed,
and he cut some more,
and he thought, well, just a bit more,
let’s be certain to get it all,
out, out, damn spot
and anything spreading
from the spot,
so he kept going,
cut, swab, cut, swab,
until it was all gone,
she had no skin left,
then he wrapped her
in parchment paper
to protect the furniture
and sent her home,
dripping, happily dripping,
so relieved—no skin,
no melanoma,
no worries anymore.

---

Cynthia Bernard is a woman in her early seventies, a long-time classroom teacher and an emerging writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. She lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Passager, Verse-Virtual, Poetry Breakfast, The Seattle Star, and elsewhere. She was selected by Western Rivers Conservancy to serve as the Poet-Protector of Deer Creek Falls in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.

By Kristen Alexander

The toxic one once told me he avoids me at all costs.
“I wouldn’t be at lunch with you if it wasn’t for our boss.”
Just weeks after I met him, he stormed out and slammed his door,
refused to talk it out and said that ‘fluff’s’ not what he’s for.
Said he’d do things how I’d asked, called it malicious compliance.
I never saw a day he lacked that kind of veiled defiance.
In meetings, if I questioned him, his face turned pink with rage.
Our leaders called me paranoid, likely blamed it on my age.
The team (except the leaders) all agreed he was a problem,
but no one had the guts to speak – it wasn’t their job to solve them.
With him, I always felt unsafe, so guarded and defenseless.
I’ve never had a colleague seem so angry and defensive.
The leaders will reward these men for their toxic behavior,
But when a woman acts with strength, they rarely show her favor.
He fed on praise and accolades, the leaders on him doted.
He sopped it up like bread with broth, and then he got promoted.

---

Kristen is an Arkansas native who has worked at UAMS for almost eight years. She earned her bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Central Arkansas and her dual master’s in public health and public service from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the Clinton School of Public Service. Her typical artistic medium is textiles, such as quilts, knitting, and fabric collage. She competes in the annual SOMArdi Gras beard competition, and has been featured in “Art from the Heart”, the UAMS art show, for her homemade beards. Her 2025 beard took the “Best in Show” prize – the first time a woman won the entire contest! Kristen also sings, plays ukulele, and volunteers as a docent at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.

By Rachel Greenberg

Nearing cronehood
I’ve had my share of trauma and tragedy.
Buried loved ones,
my own war wounds.
To those who seek healing,
now that I know what I know
I want to tell them this:
Don’t you know that your pain is metaphor
your loss, poetic
the horrors you’ve experienced, heroic?

Everything is a symbol of something else
like these leaves clinging
to their last vestiges of life
before they spin to earth,
like the cold darkness before dawn,
like the wild geese just outside my window.
They call to me
as you tell your story.

---

Rachel Greenberg is a therapist, poet, memoirist and storyteller who lives in bucolic Western Massachusetts. She has a private practice and her work as a therapist and love of wild spaces inform her writing. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Atlanta Review, the Elysium Review, Mama Stew, the Main Street Rag, and the Sun Magazine.

By Kara Smeltzer

How do I even live?
When do I start living?
Why do I feel like my life hasn’t started yet?

If I just finish school,
If I just get a job,
If I just get promoted,
If I just make this much money,
If I just win this award,
If I just get this grant,
If I just get my dream job,
THEN I’ll really start living.

But that can’t be right.
Time is passing passing passing, and it’s not coming back.
Life is being lived.
My life is happening, my life is now.
So live, so do, so be, so breathe.
Treasure, risk, love.

It’s time to life. You only get one.

---

Kara Smeltzer is a third-year medical student at UAMS. She enjoys propagating her houseplants, hiking, spending time with her family, and reading. She plans to apply to family medicine and work in low-resource communities both across the country and internationally.

By Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

I expect he’ll come home
from the hospital—thin,

but still barrel-chested.
I’ll nurse him.

Buy boxes of Ensure.
Paper underwear.

Put out blue towels, flower
sheets on our queen bed.

Tisch, 17 West,
Room 15—

There are two stiff mattresses
close enough to kiss.

And through a large, clear window—
the black, black night.

Under a head light, I see
my husband’s lips
quiver when he snores.
Step close enough

to stroke his forehead, his neck.
To whisper words.

Will he hear?

This sterile hospital room
is our bedroom, where shared

sleep and darkness
are intimate as sex.

Morning. Still breathing.
I take the train home.

A hushed phone call
before sun the next day.

He’s hard as marble, soon
to be ash.

I wash the floral sheets, return
the blue towels to the closet.

Weeks later, I etch the night—
to fix it, to hold it.

---

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet who lives in Tuckahoe, New York. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate, Streetlight Magazine, New Verse News and Consequence.

By Rachel Armes-McLaughlin

I was sitting down to dinner
when you left this earth.

I had just bathed my daughter
and looked at the time.

I could smell the roasted vegetables.
Dinner was later than usual—

The chicken took forever,
and the cabbage burned.

The leftovers are in my fridge,
but I don’t think they’ll be eaten.

Maybe it’s silly, but I keep thinking
about how I cooked for you

and your daughter, 
long before mine was born.

You didn’t like to cook meat yourself, 
but I think you would have liked the chicken.

I wish you could have been here,
instead of where you were

and where you are now.

---

Rachel Armes-McLaughlin, a grant writer with the UAMS Institute for Digital Health and Innovation, has written poetry for over 20 years. Her work is published in Loblolly Press; Middle Mouse Press; Medicine and Meaning, where she reviews poetry; and a Central Arkansas Library System anthology, with one poem nominated for Best of the Net. Rachel lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband, daughter, and cats.

By Jonathan Aibel

The hole in my chest,
better than a daily pierce,

my three-headed dock
for tubes. Hard to distinguish

medicine from venom. Spins
sometimes, the hospital,

nurses interrupt dreams,
the bed squeals in alarm

if I try to get up
on my own. I’m doing well,

they say. I never know
from minute to shivering

minute. Waiting on me
to emerge, fight the cells

circulating my seas, restore
to something I recognize, me.

---

Jonathan B. Aibel is a recovering software engineer who lives in Concord, Massachusetts, traditional homelands of the Nipmuc. His poems have been published in Barrelhouse, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Jonathan’s chapbook Echoes of Uruk was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press 2024 Snowbound Prize. http://www.jbaibelpoet.com.

By Courteney Ragan

It’s always with me,
A forever companion forged by circumstances not within my control.
Like a rash that lessens in intensity but never fully goes away.
Or a forgotten bruise that hums with pain at the slightest touch.

In my sleep, like an intruder who steals a peaceful night’s rest and erases memories of joy in an instant,
Only to awake with the sinking, aching, devastation that none of it was real.
In the grocery store, like a soft breeze carrying the scent of her
lemon perfume—
Only to realize, again, it’s worn by a stranger, not her.
In the car, like an echo that replays whispers of her laugh
Only to be met with an empty, dark passenger seat.

Life before my companion was light.
Days never felt too long or like my feet were perpetually stuck in thick, brown mud.
Until years were forever changed in seconds,
And, like rushing water, it poured in, covering and transforming everything in its path.

Grief is my companion.
It is in these everyday occurrences of my life that it has interwoven itself and stands tallest.
Just as I grab my bag before leaving the house in the morning, it grabs me and carries me throughout the day.
A powerful reminder of a life that is no more.

---

Courteney Ragan is an instructor in the Writing Center as part of the Educational and Student Success Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Before joining UAMS in 2024, she worked as an English teacher for 11 years. She has a Master of Education degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and enjoys reading literature of all genres. She currently resides in Maumelle, Arkansas, and enjoys spending time with family and friends.