Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: poem

  • Pink and yellow

    Govind Krishnan Durham, North Carolina, United States I am wearing pink, I have a rosy glowMy breaths are even, measured, slowThe doctors come and go. Come and go. Come and go.But sometimes they mutter, their heads bowed low. And when they do this, I rest my hands on my growing bellylistening intently, but understanding barely.…

  • Ode to my stethoscope

    Hilton KoppeLennox 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 liberal sprinkling…

  • La couronne

    Sophia WilsonNew Zealand 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 overwalking frame, inches down supermarket aislesin search of weekly staples, not agile enough to dodge another’s cough,nor equipped to stockpileor…

  • of little significance

    Vamsi ReddyKeri JonesAugusta, Georgia, United States VAMSI REDDY is a third-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his undergraduate education at Augusta University in the inaugural class of the BS/MD accelerated medical program. Vamsi enjoys the beauty which pervades through the medical field and has taken to trying to capture a glimpse…

  • Some subjects are given

    Michael SalcmanBaltimore, Maryland, United States Some subjects are given to the authorsof poems and songs, of mechanical puzzlesand lives, given over and over like a spiking fever in an old TB wardor the low level irritation of a cancerraising its hand in a bone — here I am it says, conversant with any private language…

  • I tried to write a dementia poem

    Mac GreeneIndianapolis, Indiana, United States I tried to write…Did I tell you already?About the softball teamon my first job,and I left my mitton the front seatof my 1965 Chevy pickupthat I sold for a hundred fifty dollarsin Rappahannock County,with the ball in the pocketjust like you’re supposed to. Where was I?I tried to write about…

  • “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I

    Alice MacNeillOxford, United Kingdom Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?Ever from their hair and through their hand palmsMisery swelters.…

  • The blue pain

    Shirali RainaNoida, India His black smudged,The white blurred,Grey and only greyHis shadowed world.Breathing in doubt,Breathing out dread.Angels in his heart,And demons in the head. His mind in tatters,Blue, blue the pain.Shunned and ragged,The world of insane.Mutes of the dusk,Dawns of half dead.Angels in his heart.And demons in the head. Oh ! The temptationOf the fatal…

  • An illuminating experience in my practice

    Gian Battista DanziPietra Ligure, Italy Aevo rarissima nostro Simplicitas(Simplicity is very rare these days)-Ovid, Ars amatoria I, 241-242 Some five years ago, I had the privilege of treating M.A., a visionary and restless soul who used to dabble in writing, and who had been admitted to my Cardiology Division because of an acute coronary syndrome.…

  • The tyranny of optimism—A hectic in my blood

    James RickertBloomington, Indiana, USA Poet’s statement “The tyranny of optimism” was written after I had spoken to a cancer support group. I became angry when it became apparent that all of us had experienced well-intentioned healthy people asking us to do the impossible: put aside all negative emotions—not mourn the loss of our own health,…