2 - Poetry

It is a long story. This is a short version:
I was about to die.
I was about to make room for new people.
My job was going to be the dream job
of someone who has been waiting for a break.
But I was stubborn; I was not sure I wanted to expire
and the doctors knew too much about death’s tricks,
so, I lived for a while longer, because, also, someone died
her heart was still beating.
So, in a barbarous display of art and cunning
the surgeons carved the dead woman’s chest
and cut her heart out for me.

The empty cavity of my chest waited like a yearning womb
like a bride at midnight, while the doctors held
in their obtuse machinery of death, the flicker of my life,
and the other person’s heart entered me, it filled my chest
and eagerly resumed its mandates of drums and cymbals
blowing, pumping, hissing, blindly loyal to the blood.
And in an instant the other person and I fused, bride and groom,
my life and her life, half in half, betrothed
surrendered to the mystery of electricity and flesh.

---

Carlos C. Gomez

It’s times like these, 
with the certainty of our assumptions, no longer certain,
that bring a richer appreciation for the touchstones and the lifelines, 
for the heartfelt friends and the fond rituals that carry us through each day,
for the ones who remind us our roots hold braided branches
strong enough to bear roses, 
and of all the reasons, like the simple scent of a rose,
that make a precious life worth living.

---

Carol Thrush, Ed.D., is a professor in the Department of Surgery.

I walk past the morgue in the hospital
Underbelly on my way to the key shop,
Resigned to replacing the keys I lost 
Two weeks ago. I try to think solemn
Thoughts as I pass and glance inside,
My mood something like prayerful.
Intentions are intentions, even when
They don’t quite materialize into words.
When does a person become a body?
When does a body stop being a body, 
Or stop being someone’s body? 
When does it become substance of some other sort?
Can we be so sure it does if we never
Witness the body’s final dissolution? 
There, in the deathbed or in the morgue?
Perhaps, somewhere en route, where soul
And body go their separate ways; One to
_______, the other to the morgue with certainty,
The new arrivals of the lately departed.
Speaking of letting the dead pass on, Kent said, 
“Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! He hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.”
What’s the opposite of haunted?
A place where bodies exceed souls, if only
For moments in passing.

---

Christopher Fettes is a program coordinator in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS.