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    • Issue One: Winter/Spring 2020
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    • Issue Two: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue Two – Conversations
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      • Issue Two – Non-fiction
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    • Issue Three: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue Three – Conversations
      • Issue Three – Fiction
      • Issue Three – Images
      • Issue Three – Non-fiction
      • Issue Three – Poetry
    • Issue Four: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 4 – 55 Words
      • Issue 4 – Conversations at UAMS
      • Issue 4 – Fiction
      • Issue 4 – Images
      • Issue 4 – Non-Fiction
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    • Issue Five: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 5 – Poetry
      • Issue 5 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 5 – Conversations @ UAMS
      • Issue 5 – Fiction
      • Issue 5 – Images
      • 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
  • Fiction
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  1. University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
  2. Medicine and Meaning
  3. Poetry

Poetry

Poetry Archive

The Beloved Leaves Without Goodbye

October 7, 2022

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

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Time Benders!

October 6, 2022

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

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The Art of Sighing

October 5, 2022

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

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Summer Ash

October 5, 2022

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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Chameleon

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

Snowflakes wide

as white hens. Amaranth

bleeds scarlet on the snow.

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Night Sounds in the Time of Covid

October 5, 2022

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

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Med School Interview, 1975

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

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Iwo Jima Diary

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

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Field Notebook at Tinicum

October 5, 2022

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

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Day Job

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

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Sanguine

October 5, 2022

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

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Writing Checks After Death

October 5, 2022

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

October 5, 2022

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

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What will one sacrifice

October 5, 2022

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

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We Were Supposed to Grow Old Together

October 5, 2022

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

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The Tragedy of Apples

October 5, 2022

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

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Markham

October 5, 2022

Sunburnt stranger
Buries face in hands
Staggers shadeless sidewalk

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Shadow Puppets

October 4, 2022

Hands clasped,
fingers interlaced
for just a moment

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Philip

October 4, 2022

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

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Pain Lives in Both Misery and Joy (with Commentary by Billy Thomas, M.D.)

March 31, 2022

Pain lives in both misery and joy, respectively
it is the volume and projection that differs among them.

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Worn Soles

March 31, 2022

Those shoes have traveled far
And borne their wearer well
To tend to newborn cries
And lift where others fell

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What I Know

March 31, 2022

She ties a string around my shoe
to remind me what day it is, 
I try to hold on, 
knowing right from left – memories.

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The Dreamer

March 31, 2022

I didn’t think she’d be here
for the birth of her first grandchild,
but you never know what a ghost will do

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The Destination

March 31, 2022

Mid afternoon, bright winter’s day
A string of headlights coming my way
The deliberate solemn caravan gives pause for reflection 

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The Box: A haiku

March 31, 2022

A hungry stomach
When I finish morning rounds
I’ll take one box please

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The Body

March 31, 2022

At 3:00 a.m. a storm whips the trees.
I roll over, breast aching.

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Mr. Creeper

March 31, 2022

when you got with me I had no idea 
it could be a life-sentence you’re an 
armed robber holding me under false
imprisonment in my own body

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Morning Rounds

March 31, 2022

His age and comorbidities were now rehearsed and repeated without effort daily,
His short years of existence now condensed to a list of clinical diagnoses

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413A

March 31, 2022

Whatever else may happen
to a man on his back for six months,
at least he must become expert on himself.

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(His Mother Said) That She Was Eating Cherries

March 31, 2022

Cancer had chewed away half her mouth and face,
carving the soft palette, chiseling the jawbone,
cutting her cheek out, slicing the tongue lengthwise.

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In the Dark

March 31, 2022

They turned off the lights
in the hallway and area where I was seated.
The maintenance man was working
on some problem he
was having with the lights,
so there I was,
in the dark,
once again,
like I had been my whole life.

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Elegy for Eight Words

March 31, 2022

The barricade was built on my car 
dashboard during my daily drive, 
petit Gavroche shot
in the forty-fourth CD.

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Cutting Out Paper Stars

March 31, 2022

So now she cuts out paper stars,
stenciled onto construction paper.

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COVID Eyes

March 31, 2022

Light refracted to reveal our thoughts and fears
Perhaps too much so.
We are naked to one another’s stares
As if we can no longer conceal the vulnerabilities within.

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COVID and Other Blue Moods Tanka

March 31, 2022

Always up for schwitz
In sauna, hot tub or springs
To rid self of bad
Humors/tumors, dread virus
–I would rather not be dead.

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Invitation

March 31, 2022

Meet me after midnight
at the place all lovers go
at the edge of names and words 
and of everything we know

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A Spark in the Dark

October 4, 2021

I am the rose in the desert,
withered for lack of rain.

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40° out of 180 – Song of the Scapula

October 4, 2021

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

October 4, 2021

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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Noise

October 4, 2021

My mind is noise today.

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Hot, Cold, then Quiet

October 4, 2021

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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Untitled

October 4, 2021

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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Elegy

October 4, 2021

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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Hold My Hands Please (A palliative care physician’s reflection)

October 4, 2021

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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Family Tree

October 4, 2021

My roots sink deeper than I know.

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Jenny

October 4, 2021

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

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Thresholds

October 4, 2021

I thought of thresholds—
intimations of mortality
in the undiscovered country
of lost dreams.

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Gatorade Bones

October 4, 2021

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

October 4, 2021

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

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Through Space and Time

October 4, 2021

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

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The Isolated Room

October 4, 2021

Since midnight,
no place to sleep
just a coffee machine
with no sugar or cream.

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Long Term Care

October 4, 2021

How much of me is you,
And you, me?
When I remember the first of us,
It’s just a blur of becoming.

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Mornings & Evenings After Retirement 退休後的晨昏

April 19, 2021

Unlike ripples fading away,
old dreams can’t be kept at bay.

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The Price of a White Coat

April 19, 2021

More than living. You know, our life. The path is not straight.

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Kitchen Communion

April 19, 2021

Dishes are done and there is quiet.
Trading my phone for stillness, I
Pour half a glass of red in an old jam jar.

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Sawhorses

April 19, 2021

You should know this house is
my mother’s; be mad at her; maybe
visit her at Parkview Clinic

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Waiting Room

April 19, 2021

There are poems I intend to write
That land on the purgatorial backburner
Never to be revisited
Because the poem was conceived
In a distinct and fleeting moment.

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The Laundry Cycle

October 7, 2020

Do you ever feel like a shirt,
With wooden clips pinning your shoulders to the line,
Left blowing in the wind to dry,

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The Healer

October 7, 2020

There are days I am disillusioned,
When I am bereft of my purpose,
Alone in my office,

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The Crowd.

October 7, 2020

On a lazy Sunday,
I sit in the sun,
reading a book by the swing.
Some shadows watch over
the unturned page,

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Phased Out?

October 7, 2020

Princess bedside and stand-up telephones. Landlines. Ma Bell. Telephone booths. Victrolas. 78 and 45 rpm records. Ash trays. Analog photography.Alarm clocks. Walkman. Transistor radios.Beta and VHS. Tape cassettes.Vacuum tubes. IBM desktop typewriters. Blockbuster stores. Telegrams.News reels at the movies. Air mail and Special Delivery.Three cent stamps. Fountain pens. Oldsmobile. Pontiac. Nash Rambler. Plymouth.Spark plugs. Packard. Edsel. Rumble seats. Leaded gasoline. Rhodesia. […]

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Haikus

October 7, 2020

high tech and high touch
treatment scans and MRI’s
where is the high touch

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Ode to Blessed Assurance

October 7, 2020

I felt the ache in my head,
The cranial vessels’ pulsing beat,
My restless, trembling legs in bed,
The tingling in the soles of my feet.

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My Patient

October 7, 2020

“Can you please let me go?”
She pleaded with tears in her eyes

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Moments in Passing

October 7, 2020

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.

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Lifelines

October 7, 2020

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 […]

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Heart Transplant

October 7, 2020

It is a long story. This is a short version: I was about to die.

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At Peace and Free

October 7, 2020

I dreamt I had a garden
in the backyard of a home
that doesn’t actually exist.

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White Coat Anonymity

October 7, 2020

Do you notice me?
Do you see my soul?
Or does attire blind you?

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To the Front-Line Healthcare Providers in the Time of COVID-19

October 7, 2020

In ancient times the knights rode out
to cheers and loud applause,
To fight our foes, those armed heroes, took up our common cause,

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Change

December 17, 2019

When I am old, I want to look back
And feel like my life really mattered.

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Epic Haikus

December 13, 2019

Epic, open, please!
Numerous charts to complete.
Will you ever load?

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I, Atlas

December 10, 2019

Beautiful life so often forsaken
Let sounds of the night gently awaken
The burning desire to live

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A Mother

December 9, 2019

A mother in the NICU
waiting room thinks aloud,
If God were listening

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Musings

December 9, 2019

I do not understand love, as mightily as I strive

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River

December 9, 2019

Year after year flowing through halls
A healing river of humanity

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