Month: April 2018
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Scotch
Eden AlmasudeMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States I don’t remember your name,Only fasciculating musclesbeginning to wasteNerves with unknown lesionsA toe up, a reflex downThe neurologist quietly notes,Bulbar involvement entails a poor prognosisMeaning: if you can’t talk, you can’t breatheEach new symptom forebodingSlow, stepwise deathWe turn to count,atrophyspasticityhyperreflexiamapping neuronsalong the examWe fixate to push awaythe realization,this kind, tattooed bikeris…
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Call me Sylvester!
T. KilleenCleveland, Ohio, United States I could hear him as he rounded the corner from the lobby. He seemed to know almost everyone in the office; they cooed over him and he fawned at each and every one of them. My day was already busy with a full office schedule, a lecture to the residents…
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The symbolic portrait of Mozart’s patron Dr. Ferdinand Dejean
Stephen MartinDurham, United Kingdom Dr. Ferdinand Dejean (1731–1797) grew up in the Bonn Court alongside Beethoven’s father and trained as a surgeon.1,2 For ten years he worked on Dutch East India Company ships from Persian Gulf islands to Sri Lanka, in Bengal, India and in Batavia – now modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia. He married Anna Maria…
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The anatomy of Michelangelo (1475–1564)
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Michelangelo Buonarroti was an exception to the rule that the qualities of many brilliant artists and composers are realized and extolled only after death. He was recognized by contemporaries as a genius, a “Hero of the High Renaissance,” the only artist of whom it was claimed in his lifetime that he…
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Haunted by a living spirit
Bernardo NgSan Diego, California, United States Witchcraft has been present in the Mexican culture for centuries, both in and out of the context of disease, with witches practicing either white or black magic. The most nationally recognized site for witchcraft is the city of Catemaco, Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. The white magic witches,…
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Finding Peace
Zachary JacobsSan Francisco, California, US The ocean wind gusts,heady and thick,chapped lips speckledwith briny grit.Gulls yammer in protest of the breeze,fits of throaty birdsongamid the whisper of the sea.She sits.Sand conforms lovingly to her hips,toes wriggling in its cool embrace,as the sun succumbs to the horizon,its warmth, long forgotten,slurped up greedily by time,relentless,and fleeting as…
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Heroes need medical care too
Liam FarrellRostrevor, Ireland I was driving along a quiet country road when I saw the first bluebell, its delicate beauty a promise of spring. I stopped to relish the moment, to live in the now. Birdsong, the wind rustling through hedgerows, and the disheveled dryad loveliness left me humbled. In the distance a cuckoo sang,…
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Hands
Laura WhiteRochester, Minnesota, United States I have long been ambivalent toward my prematurely wrinkled hands. This is a combination of my mother’s distaste for her own mitts – I am so sorry you got my hands – and the various comments of others referencing “old lady hands” and similar sentiments. My self-hand-concept has been historically unglamorous. I have…
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Thank you for your service
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, USA As a reservist, I had heard those words on numerous occasions. I appreciated and understood that those words were not directed specifically towards me, but rather to the uniform that I was wearing. Although I had spent twenty-five years in uniform, I felt unworthy and undeserving of those words. I…