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Medicine and Meaning
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    • Issue Three: Winter/Spring 2021
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    • Issue Four: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 4 – 55 Words
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    • Issue Five: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 5 – Poetry
      • Issue 5 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 5 – Conversations @ UAMS
      • Issue 5 – Fiction
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      • Issue 5 – Non-Fiction
    • Mehta Awards 2022
    • Issue 6: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 6 – Non-Fiction
      • Issue 6 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 6 – Conversations @ UAMS
      • Issue 6 – Fiction
      • Issue 6 – Images
      • Issue 6 – Poetry
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  1. University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
  2. Medicine and Meaning
  3. Issues
  4. Issue 6: Summer/Fall 2022
  5. Issue 6 – Poetry

Issue 6 – Poetry

Poetry

Poetry

The Beloved Leaves Without Goodbye

Roses from Susan and a christening
into what I have no idea of.

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Time Benders!

On Terminal Disease Square, at the intersection of Doubt and Despair, live the Benders of time,

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The Art of Sighing

The art of sighing isn’t hard to master;
each day greets us with news of fresh disaster.

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Summer Ash

You could fly for an instant
whole body in separate hands
cupped and held hands
you could fly when they let you

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Iwo Jima Diary

In a slot of Grandma Ada’s rolltop
I found a hand-colored photo
of Uncle D. in his Marine uniform, smiling,
eyes bluer than the overbright sky
of the hand-tinted tropical backdrop

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Impossible Objects

Her mom’s been bleeding for days.
Transfusion after transfusion
As if her veins were sieves

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Going Out on the Ice

Nanuk thought it was time,
time to go out on the ice,
to relieve her family of one more useless
mouth to feed during this hungry time

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Gatsby

We’re all Gatsby, always have been, standing lonely on our own pier, 
Looking for the certain future, rich as Croesus, really, in this world, 
Food, rent, man, and printed books online. It’s all on line!

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Flashbulb Memory

Under the dresser
a small plastic button
uncovered as if
all of the sudden,

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Field Notebook at Tinicum

I could have used the set of traveling colors,
the brush with its barrel of water.

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Day Job

They still call it that
Even though now it’s all just screen time
Of course it is day
Definitely.

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Code Blue

In the beginning there is chaos.
Alarms and running and pressured orders.
A conglomerate of people with a shared goal.

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Chameleon

I laugh when others laugh,
but offer naught to conversation;
standing still against a shaded wall
observing without participation.

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An Early Snow

Snowflakes wide

as white hens. Amaranth

bleeds scarlet on the snow.

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Night Sounds in the Time of Covid

Midnight. Sleep eludes me.
As hours pass, my brain is full
of the usual black dogs

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Med School Interview, 1975

I’m twenty-one, touring a Chicago hospital in a dirty-snow winter, trailing a student who raves about the school, its illustrious doctors.

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Lucky

I remember her clumping tread
the rubber-tipped cane
striking the floor before
the halt-slide step

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Sanguine

You will care for them when it’s time
With static eyes, pores firing off sweat,

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Writing Checks After Death

The guy in charge of the cemetery
said I would like this site.
It has a seasonal view, Mead’s Mountain in winter,
and you can hear the stream year-round.

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Worlds Apart

I saw geraniums
in the first snow,
blood-bright,
upright,
and one yellow daisy.

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What will one sacrifice

sacrificing self.
physicians spend a lifetime,
to save another.

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We Were Supposed to Grow Old Together

People flicker out. Each of us has an unknown
expiration date.

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The Tragedy of Apples

It was a fine Sunday morning
when I felt the first sign.

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Markham

Sunburnt stranger
Buries face in hands
Staggers shadeless sidewalk

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Shadow Puppets

Hands clasped,
fingers interlaced
for just a moment

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Philip

We named you posthumously
since you died the same day
as the prince

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