Issue 4 – Poetry
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A Spark in the Dark
I am the rose in the desert,
withered for lack of rain.
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40° out of 180 – Song of the Scapula
Not even a fourth of possible- that’s all
your arm and you will get without it-
Forty degrees of forward.
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Appointment 4:10
She told me that she sat with him
At the dining table.
They had bought some pills,
Had made a pact long ago.
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Hot, Cold, then Quiet
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.
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Elegy
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
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Untitled
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
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Hold My Hands Please (A palliative care physician’s reflection)
Please hold my hands, she said.
Is this it? Is this where I am going to die?
I am so exhausted.
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Jenny
I think about you often,
My former teacher.
You died while I was
In graduate school.
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Thresholds
I thought of thresholds—
intimations of mortality
in the undiscovered country
of lost dreams.
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Gatorade Bones
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:
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Waiting For Breakfast in Rehab
The angled morning sun
reveals the grimy streaks
on the windows
as I wait for breakfast.
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Through Space and Time
There you are beyond my reach,
Separated by space and barred
From my physical greeting.
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The Isolated Room
Since midnight,
no place to sleep
just a coffee machine
with no sugar or cream.
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Long Term Care
How much of me is you,
And you, me?
When I remember the first of us,
It’s just a blur of becoming.