Category: Poetry
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The air remembers
Elizabeth CrowstonCavalier, North Dakota, United States In the grasp of the dawn, where your laughter once danced, The air remembers where you were, a tale of love glanced. I reach out for you but am greeted with raw emptiness, The air holds your shape, unreachable to me, in its quietness. Beneath the sky’s vast, unfathomable blue, Where sunsets painted…
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Decades in the trenches
Robert PietrzakWest Haven, Connecticut Seventy-six years have weathered this frame, yet nineteen still smolders—unyielding flame. In jungles of memory where nightmares reside, vines of the past knot heaven to hell’s side. The therapy chair groans beneath my weight, Dr. Martinez speaks—calm, measured, straight. “Trauma,” “processing”—echoes rebound, off bunker-thick walls where silence is sound. The world keeps a rhythm I’ve long cast…
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From “The Sad Shepherd” by W.B. Yeats
Nuka GbafahDublin, Ireland In his poem, Yeats portrays the load of depression weighing upon a desolate shepherd and his bid to find compassion and comfort in the inanimate world. We are not being told whether he is dispirited because of the isolation of his vocation, or has he chosen his profession to cater to a…
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TB or not to be?
Bhaumik KamdarMumbai, India Every time I sneeze, I am distrustedWith every bout of cough, everyone is disgustedI am subjected to exclusion, and otherizationEverything is nothing but societal authorization Thanks to Mycobacterium that has invaded meSociety has secluded meI am nothing but a name in the TB registryNothing but a government beneficiary My sputum is a…
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Multiple personalities are taking over me
Prekshya ParajuliLouisville, Kentucky, United States In a world where days unfold with habitual grace,I find myself caught in a strange, erratic chase.Not half an hour past, yet hunger calls again,A craving that burns despite my daily strain. Eight hours a day, I toil without much complaint,But today, mere hours in, exhaustion paints my faint.A friend…
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The silent struggles of a healer
Biplab AdhikariLouisville, Kentucky, United States A regular day, it’s time for work,News of a virus, where shadows lurk.No treatment, no vaccine, no known fix,Symptoms vague, it’s all in the mix. Don a mask, the silent plea,Will this new case find its way to me?At work, I change, suit up tight,Double mask, face shield, ready for…
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Emilie Chamberlin-Conklin-Warner (1887–1968)
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The American poet Emilie Chamberlin-Conklin-Warner is one of the few non-physicians who received a prize or citation from the American Medical Association (AMA). Her Religion Marches1 is a collection of thoughtful, humorous, or sad poems about the life and work of physicians. Among them we find: “A Call to Service,” “Mountain…
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Void’s flame
Xuchu LiBeijing, China In late autumn’s golden embrace,scarlet maple leaves softly caress you,a mild exhaustion sensed,a months-long struggle persists.The tumors burgeon and spread like violet flamesupon your withered, skeletal frame—a desolate scene, frail and lame.Each breath feeds its growth.Scalding sweat on your brow,defiant tears in your eyes, unable to dispel it.Yet you fight, through dawn…
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Mordecai B. Etziony: Canadian historian of medicine and ethicist
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Mordecai Etziony was born in 1904 and worked in the Department of Medicine at the Jewish General Hospital and Jewish Hospital of Hope, Montreal. He submitted his dissertation to McGill University in 1931 under the title “The problem of ’emotions’ with particular reference to the emotional life of the child.” He…
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Nonsense poetry
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently, I read the Israeli professor Rony Reich’s translation of German nonsense poetry (Deutsche Unsinnpoesie), and among them, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Lügenmärchen (Lying Fairy Tales). I translate from the Hebrew: …Three wished to catch a hare,On crutches they came—a team.One was deaf,The second blind, the third mute.And the fourth could…