By Laura Trigg

The summer was hot enough
that earthworms in my neighborhood
unfortunate enough to crawl
out of the grass onto the sidewalk
fried into curled bits of brown string.

The room was cold enough
that my sister and I sat
wrapped in blankets
in punishing straight chairs
on opposite sides of a hospital bed
watching gaps widen between beats
on his heart monitor.

The hospital was quiet enough
that we heard his irregular breathing
and purposeful steps of night nurses
tending to those expected to see
the first flecks of another day.

We spoke to each other
in silent sister speech,
aware that time was flowing
toward the audible words of others:
He is in a better place, or
You are in our thoughts and prayers.

As the heart monitor tracing became flat,
my sister’s mouth made the shape
without the sound of a siren.

Laura Trigg is a retired rheumatologist living in Little Rock with her husband and their dog. A writer since childhood, she has had poems published in Maumelle Magazine, Encore, and Delta Poetry Review.

By Paula Martin

I want to know one of your secrets
what you dream about at night
who it is you would die for
what you still want from this life

if the beauty of a poem
sometimes makes it hard to breathe
if you ache for the chance
for the truth to set you free

if, like me, all you’ve wanted
was for love to come and stay—
something real to hold onto
and wings to fly away

Paula Martin is a writer living in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

By Robert Adam Heifetz

When the night is young, the moon will never fall
or sunrise into day
and for a moment, my thoughts are whole
yet rarely do they stay

Dreams meander the stage, like swans negotiate a sinuous stream
the daylight glistening on their napes and coverts
then lost to the pitter-patter of broken thoughts

And where have they gone, my setting sun, 
now that your light has gone?
To hear their music, and to dance its waltz!
I am lulled like a seaman to the rocks and cliffs

There I sit, as one day bleeds into another
until the dew is draped, iridescent, by the sun’s rising curtain 
And I am reborn in so many ways

Hushed, a morning greets no anvil chorus 
And through the beats of silence, an audience pickets
like old habits bickering into the night
Again, to our mountains we shall return!

Daylight, erstwhile, sirens its own tune of possibility

Now here lies my mind, benumbed,
instrument without a frequency to coalesce

Into a nature’s cenotaph, so too for all that is bright
I cry for a shadow that never was
Lost, forgotten,
what could be

And in my reflection drip a million lonesome tears,
Filling the pits of a once fruitful garden

They race, as they fall for no one but themselves,
The knowledge of what was,
splattering seeds of opportunity.

Robert Heifetz, D.O., is a second year Family Medicine Resident at UAMS-West in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His creative writing was developed long before entering Medical School. He grew up in a creative household: his father a mathematician and aspiring painter, his mother with a formal music composition background. They both encouraged his creative pursuits from an early age and he is very grateful for this.

By Jessiela Roberts

Please hold my hands, she said.
Is this it? Is this where I am going to die?
I am so exhausted.
I watched as they rolled her onto our unit; she was frail and tired.
Cyanosis had enveloped her frame.
We had used all the conservative treatment options available but continued to decline. 
With capacity intact, she elected to forgo aggressive interventions.
She had fought many health battles before and shared that if time was short, she didn’t want to spend it connected to machines withering away, especially if hope of survival hinged on a chance and a prayer.

Can my family visit me?
Her eyes were burdened with fear, as tears carved tracks along her dry cheeks,
Chest rising rapidly, racing towards the inevitable,
Air thick with desperation, as hope evaporated with each hungry breath,
Death lingered at the door like a bailiff waiting to issue a summons.
Hold my hands please.

I am scared she said, I don’t want to die alone.
I held her hands in that second, gloves to flesh, finger interlocked.
I gently cupped her cheeks and stroked her hair, while reciting the 23rd Psalm and a prayer.
A calm fell over her continence while the meds took effect.
The plastic between us felt cold and sterile but it was necessary.
The nurse entered and we assisted with her personal care before video calling her family to offer words of comfort and let them say a final good bye.

An overwhelming sense of helplessness filled my heart in that moment.
My presence, prayers and comfort meds were the only support I could give her, yet it still didn’t feel like enough. 
It was no substitute for the love and care of her family.
I wish I could bend time, and undo the events leading up to that day.

In the end, it didn’t matter that she was a good person who had spent her life doing right by her friends and family.
The COVID-19 pandemic had pushed pause on all her plans.
I watch over the next few days as she slowly slipped from this earth, 
I held her hands with each exam to let her know that I was there and I cared.
I spoke to her when words felt useless and prayed for her release.
She reminded me that healing is often just being present and offering the gift of a caring hand.
Looking back, I think holding her hands was as therapeutic for me as it was her. 
She rid me of the distress I felt of not being able to fix all the madness in the world.
She allow me to accept the chaos and pause to be present between the intersection of life and death.

Jessiela Roberts, M.D., is a Family Medicine Specialist in Fort Smith, AR. She is a graduate of Trinity School of Medicine. This piece is the distillation of her spoken word poetry in response to her experience as a physician in the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Emory Jones

My roots sink deeper than I know.

The generations marked
With lichen-crusted characters
In chiseled stone fade out of sight.

My tendrils driving deep,
Holding heritage
I stretch for sun.

Deep within
The Mother of us all,
I tap my source;
Remembered foliage
Generates my dream
Of leaves.

My roots sink deeper than I know.

Emory Jones hails from Iuka, Mississipi, United States, and is a retired English teacher. His work has been featured in many publications including Voices International, The White Rock Review, Writer’s Digest, Smokey Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Light Ekphrastic, Old Red Kimono, American Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS. Emory lives with his wife, Glenda. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

By Christopher Fettes

I think about you often,
My former teacher.
You died while I was
In graduate school.

I read updates about your
Condition when I should
Have been writing essays
For my spring classes

A year before you passed,
Which was days before I graduated.
I remember sitting on your couch,
Discussing my poetry and goals.

You might have been my advisor then,
So long has it been since I thought of that.
I wanted to reach out when 
I learned you were sick,

But I never did. I think about
That failure, too.
You frustrated your students,
But you charmed me –

You were kinder and funnier 
Than others would have said.
I think about you, and those
Who die of diseases

We don’t yet understand
On days like this
When I received a shot
For a new virus,

And yet we have no answers 
For so many diseases.
If any word echoes across
Time and this world and whatever

Comes after it, I hope
Somehow you hear me
And know I think of you,
Especially when I write.

Chris Fettes teaches the College of Public Health Writing Workshop and is poetry section chief for Medicine and Meaning. His work has been published in Slant, Nude Bruce Review, and prior issues of Medicine and Meaning.

By F. H. Thurmond

When they wheeled the gurney
where I lay half dying

through a cold dark corridor
toward luminescent light

I thought of thresholds—
intimations of mortality

in the undiscovered country
of lost dreams.

The end of the beginning
of the end of being

in one place then another
or none where the wind blows

across wasteland voids
of eternal Lethe

or the uncertain beat
of an open heart.

F. H. Thurmond is an author, filmmaker and musician from Little Rock. He currently teaches writing and literature at UA-Little Rock and UA-Pulaski Technical College

By Jordan James

On my midnight pallet lying,
full of dread and stars in my belly,
I count out all the bones
I had broken in my time:

a middle finger on the left hand,
perpetually flying the bird;
left arm: ulna, radius, clean break;
right arm: ulna, radius, cut through skin.

My bones were built with sugar
and electrolytes, sucked from a bottle
like a breast. The calcium dried
up once you discovered what lactose did

to my body. “I am so sorry,”
you told me, for what has been done
to my bones, and how you failed 
to prepare them for the world.

Jordan James has been published in Cagibi, Throats to the Sky, Product, and The Robert Frost Review, with work forthcoming in The Westchester Review. He is currently a graduate instructor at USM working on his Ph.D. in Creative Writing.

By John McPherson

The angled morning sun
reveals the grimy streaks
on the windows
as I wait for breakfast.

My view is another wing
across a small courtyard where 
patients can practice walking again.

My room-mate, ran over
by a pick-up while riding a bike,
moans softly in his sleep.
I try not to wake him when
I go to the bathroom.

The angle of the sun grows weaker,
more direct sunlight
washes out the grime and streaks
on the windows.

Breakfast arrives,
the coffee is tepid,
the eggs are runny,
the biscuit is cold.

Where is a sun for my window?

John McPherson started writing for contests in 2015 when he was in his mid-seventies. In addition to contests, his poems have appeared in The Avocet, a quarterly publication emphasizing poetry about nature; Post Scrip, an anthology of postcard poetry; and various other anthologies. His short stories have appeared in Del Garrett’s Vault of Terror, Volumes one, two, and three. He has served as President of White County Creative Writers, Gin Creek Poets, and Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas. He currently lives in Searcy, Arkansas, just 20 miles from the small town he grew up in, having lived in Little Rock, and Russellville.

By Edgar Meyer

There you are beyond my reach,
Separated by space and barred
From my physical greeting.

What realities I imagine for you!
What trepidations I feel!
What anxiety in this silent stillness!

Are you alone in the world,
In this connected world without connection?
Are you barely hanging on?

Is that why your screen is black,
And there is only a name?
Is that why you do not answer back?

Is your occasional stoic stare
An earnest plea for help—
A guttural cue that all is not well?

How many of you have I missed
In this digital chasm?
How many of you have I let down?

Do you know that I love you—
That I hope and pray for your well being?
Do you know just how much I care?

Perhaps, these little boxes can’t convey
Just how anyone is really doing,
Unless they speak up and say:

“Enough is enough; I need a hand.
The best you can do is not the best for me.
I do not understand!”

This device is not a teacher; 
This link is not a classroom.
Is it just me, or can we all agree?

Can’t we all just stop, right this very moment,
Scream into a thousand pillows,
And not pretend as though we are all really here?

Can’t we all just admit, with no disgrace,
That we are the better versions of ourselves
When we learn and teach and practice face to face?

Edgar R. Meyer, M.A.T., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor who serves as the Assistant Director of the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences Program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences, with an appointment in the School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences.