By Jennifer Fritch

LOVE is not for everyone.

Avoid LOVE if you are not prepared, as this may cause a sudden, unsafe drop in blood pressure.

If you experience chest pain, nausea, or any other discomfort from LOVE, these may be signs of a rare, but serious condition, called infatuation.

Sudden decrease or loss of hearing has been reported in people taking LOVE.  These events may be related directly to LOVE, or to other factors, such as the conscious choice to ignore your lover.

Use care with LOVE while driving.

For more information about LOVE, ask your doctor, healthcare professional, or pharmacist.

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Jennifer Fritch’s work has most recently appeared in US1 Worksheets Volume 67, which has just been released in print. In addition, she recently won the Bucks County College Short Fiction Contest.

By Vincent Casaregola

No one will know, now, or care
that, in your rush this morning, 
you grabbed one dark blue sock
and one black in the rumpled sock drawer.

Now stockinged feet rest, splayed, pointing
to opposing walls of the E.R. room,
empty now from its bustling rhythms
just moments before—finally at rest.

The sheet covers you, but not your feet,
and the room surveys you, indifferently,
as one more piece of human furniture
awaiting delivery to another site.

The wall clock continues its measured pace,
its face impassive—it did not stop 
when the attending ceased compressions
and told the charge nurse to “call it.”

On the floor beside your resting place
lie one crumpled blue glove and three
torn plastic wrappers that had held objects
once thought essential for your survival.

Within you, anatomy is closing down—
lungs, stilled, no longer trouble the air
with gasps, heart machinery motionless,
blood settling in its silent chambers.

Throughout miles of inner vessels,
red cells float aimlessly, and now that 
the vital flow has ceased, they sift slowly
downward, sadly, in gravity’s firm grasp.

In the brain, electric currents flicker
for a moment, with power now lost,
and section by section neurons fade,
darken themselves, erasing memory.

Tubes dangle from this or that device,
one or two still attached to nose and arm—
linens, blue and white, retain their wrinkles
as you left them, scented of your sweat.

From one wall, the sprinkler system head
remains unperturbed, its chrome housing,
cylindrical, offering back a convex
reflection of your now-pale repose.

Lying here, you remain in this moment’s
near silence—only the subtle sounds of air
through the building’s pipes—in just a minute,
in will come attendants to wheel you out.

Your mild scent fades from the air, and 
your image dissolves, softly, from the memory
of beige walls and grey machines—with you
gone, this room awaits another life or death.

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Vincent Casaregola, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of English and the Director of the Film Studies Program at St. Louis University. He has published and won awards for both literary nonfiction and poetry. Journals include The Examined Life, Natural Bridge, New Letters, Via, and The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies.

By Melanie Beehler

A week ago, you thought the next breath could be your last.
The family and friends were buzzing with worry
and all visited you in such a scurry.
The nurses and doctors fixed you—quite fast! 

Your lungs now clear and the discharge approved,
you smile and think that the hardest has passed.
The love you were surrounded with felt vast.
Your visitors went home, as they were soothed.

Now you are recovering at home alone.
The chores piled up and the bills began.
Worry was back although not part of the plan.
Your friends had jobs they could not postpone.

Who knew that the hardest part of a hospital visit
involved your own mind and the games it plays?
The loneliness and tears may lead you astray
but you must survive – and that is explicit. 

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Melanie Beehler is a second-year medical student at UAMS. She previously attended Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas with a major in chemistry and biology. She is originally from the small town of Pea Ridge in Northwest Arkansas. In her limited amount of free time, she enjoys spending time with her friends, drinking iced coffee, and petting every dog she sees.

The Poem in English 

green green   green yellow   green green red,          

yellow yellow   green green   green yellow red,        

red red   green green   red yellow green,                   

yellow green   yellow red   green green red.             

Pronunciation in Chinese

lǜ lǜ    lǜ huáng    lǜ lǜ hóng, 

huáng huáng    lǜ lǜ    lǜ huáng hóng,

hóng hóng   lǜ lǜ   hóng huáng lǜ, 

huáng lǜ   huáng hóng   lǜlǜ hóng. 

The Poem in Chinese

 綠綠綠黃綠綠紅、         

 黃黃綠綠綠黃紅、            

 紅紅綠綠紅黃綠、     

 黃綠黃紅綠綠紅.

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Note*:  I was rushing through the New England highways, passing by shades of colors the foliage threw onto me.  I sometimes just felt the reds and yellows randomly cutting through the greens, but without thinking, without appreciation, without judgment. If I had some intention to interpret them, perhaps I could come up with certain meanings. I am sure that there are lots of people who want to and can find more meanings than those who try to interpret Impressionist Art, more meanings than a psychiatrist who meets a patient for the first time. 

Individual patient’s and significant others’ feelings have long been a key concern in psychiatry.  In public health research, there is an increasing emphasis on community participation research, which hopes to promote all stakeholders’ perspectives. This poem reports that a person may not have any perspective, any meaning, or even any feeling about certain things about everything at least some of the time.   

I ended up writing a poem to record such an experience. It is a new kind of poem that helps people share such impressions. This poem emphasizes a rough, ambiguous impression of three groups of colors: green, yellow, and red, while discarding the shapes within each. I am going to mix all these shades randomly into an impression of only three colors which reflects a state of mind free of meaning, free of feelings, free of intentions. As such, this poem must violate two major conventions of literature – by filling the whole piece with only three words, and all of them are adjectives, no noun, not even adverb.

Note**:  The closest format that helps me prune such an experience into a literary style is probably the Classical Chinese seven-character-in-four-line-poem. It fits the random line-up of short rows of colors along the highway, and I can still insert its rigid rhythm pattern that can be recited with a music-like sound effect. The carefully arranged framework enhances the rhythm effect of the whole poem (Try reciting this poem in Chinese, as shown in the block of Pronunciation in Chinese located next to the English version). Such a rhyming convention has been a key reason for the popularity of Classical Chinese Poems. It helps the spreading of messages. Over the last 3,000 years, millions of Chinese in each generation have been able to remember and recite at least a few of such poems, illiterates included. In addition to using only three characters to fill up all 28 slots, I have also to violate one more requirement of such convention – that there should be no more than one or sometimes two identical characters in a poem, especially not in the same line.  

Note***: Most Classical Chinese Poems require structured rhyming in every line and every location in a line.  While certain locations allow for flexibility, the last character in at least half of lines must come from one of several dozens of groups of tones. 

There are roughly two types of tones: Flat (F) and Ramp (R) tones. The location of each character must follow a certain pattern, unless either F or R is allowed (X). There are several sub-groups of the Classical 4 x 7 style poems, depending on the pattern of location of the tones. The version of this poem follows this pattern: 

X R X F X R F,

X F X R X F F,

X F X R X F R,

X R X F X R F.

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Tom Chung, Ph.D., M.Phil., B.S.Sc., is a professor in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health. He has also maintained a life-long passion in the study of Chinese history, culture, and poetry. He is one of a few writers who has published in five Chinese societies and diasporas, despite their political differences.