Death in the time of corona
Nivetha Subramanian Palo Alto, California, United States The Garden of Death. Hugo Simberg. 1896. Ateneum Museum. Source When several years ago, a virus, continents away, barred grieving families from holding their loved ones, I thought how lonely it must be, to breathe a last breath, surrounded by masked strangers. I greet you this morning, […]
Ode to my stethoscope
Hilton Koppe Lennox Head, Australia Poet’s note My Littman stethoscope has accompanied me on my journey in medicine across five decades into premature medical retirement. It was definitely more difficult to lay down my stethoscope than it had been for me to recommend medical retirement to many of my patients. This poem includes a […]
To see or not to see
J. Trig Brown Durham, North Carolina, United States Walter Cronkite. U.S. Marine Corps photo in Clark Dougan and Stephen Weiss, Nineteen Sixty-Eight. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1983. Wikimedia. In my youth I watched the body count mount. In black and white the nightly news “and that’s the way it is” Saint Walter mouthed, to […]
Ignes Fatui of the neurotic mind
Ashten R. Duncan Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States Rocking in my vessel sturdy Upon the waters of a swamp so dirty, I am in the crow’s nest En route to my impending test. Ever since I was young, I have been given to the far-flung: Quiet panic of a possible foe, Wishes to never disturb […]
Reporting a pandemic
Francis Christian Saskatoon, Canada Nonno watching the news. Jakob Montrasio. Taken on December 21, 2011. From Flickr. CC BY 2.0 Dust to dust and doom delivered by newscasts dripping irony in considered doses of despair; feigning knowledge of ignorance, feigning ignorance of absent panic and knowledge from experts claiming uncertainty. But the web […]
Blessed is the heart
Jeanne Bryner Newton Falls, Ohio, United States Study of standing chute. Dominik Skutecký. 1880-1900. Slovak National Gallery. Image Source Peacemaker inside the great barn father of us all, he passes the meat plate, its thick roast to the left his fork last in line. Bless his bulbous nose, ruddy face and bloodshot eyes, his slur […]
La Couronne
Sophia Wilson New Zealand Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. NIAID. CC BY 2.0 Virions, under an electron microscope, resemble a crown. An artist’s soft hued roses and golds, belie the sinister underbelly, the forked tongue. Everything suddenly looks a whole lot different; Today an elderly woman inclined over walking frame, inches down supermarket aisles in search of weekly […]
Aniza
Eleonore Blaurock-Busch Germany Her Scream by Arlene LaDell Hayes. Encaustic and Oil on Panel 14×11. Source I miss my people and my home, but don’t send me back. I don’t have a passport, no papers. Dad gave them to my husband-to-be, the one who couldn’t take me now, and I am not sad about […]
The African Savannah
Steve Ablon Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Photo by Steve Ablon Forty years ago, my father wore his safari hat, squinted through binoculars, told us those giraffes, the dark ones, are older, and soon will not be able to outrun lions or will break a leg, be eaten. That is the cycle of life he […]
What she sees
Michelle M. Kittleson Los Angeles, California, United States From Openclipart. Public Domain. I know she does not believe me, Why won’t you save my son? Why won’t you see what I see? Her firstborn; calm and chubby; Why can’t he walk? He’s one. Why won’t you see what I see? Genetic tests […]