Poetry - Hektoen International

Battle of six feet

March 24, 2022

Mark Mosley Wichita, Kansas, United States Sleep (w/CPAP). Artwork by Howard J on Flickr, October 19, 2020. CC BY-NC 2.0. They die alone now; jet pilots soaring solo upward muffled voices sucked into machines speaking a language we recognize but too distant to quite understand until their plastic faces harden and eyes glaze over […]

Metastatic sarcoma

February 24, 2022

Tulsi Patel Chicago, Illinois, United States His big regret was never building his son a trampoline, now locked away in the shed like some treasure chest he can’t open. Eyes welling up, he says to me proudly, resignedly “16 tumors” before he coughs up a river of rotten red roses. A Foot Bridge, North […]

Love as illness: Symptomatology

February 23, 2022

Frank Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States Figure 1. Sappho as imagined by Raphael in the fresco known as Parnassus in the Raphael rooms in the Palace of the Vatican (c. 1509–1511). She appears in a corner of the fresco, holding a scroll with her name. Via Wikimedia. Is love a disease? I mean erotic, […]

Happy hypoxia

February 15, 2022

Khyati Gupta Mumbai, India Scots Mission Hospital, Tiberias (Torrance). Hospital beds. Photo. Matson Collection, c. 1934-39. Library of Congress. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Poet’s statement: Happy hypoxia is a poem I wrote while trying to capture the thoughts of a patient in solitude infected with coronavirus amidst the second wave of the pandemic. […]

Vigil

February 8, 2022

Terri Erickson Pfafftown, North Carolina, United States Untitled painting by Stephen White. Used with permission. In a care home in Göteborg, Sweden, my husband’s sister, Jensina, sits vigil at the bedside of their Aunt Astrid, who is dying. She holds her hand, speaks to her as if everything is as it was, the two […]

On the death of a hospital volunteer

February 8, 2022

Bonnie Salomon Lake Forest, Illinois, United States Golf course greens were not for you—too quiet. No cruise ships to sail—too boring. Retirement held no enchantment for you. Mask and pills alongside a coffee. Photo by Fawaz.tairou. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Instead, you chose us— —the motley ER crew—hardly noticed, gliding through white coats […]

Flesh on flesh

February 2, 2022

Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States Holding hands. Photo by Jclk8888 on Pixabay. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. There is a solace to flesh on flesh, a laying on of the hands, a ritual of caring, but now, in our distant worlds, we hide in pixeled foxholes, tap, tap, tapping on computers, tablets, and […]

Metastases

November 18, 2021

A CXR of a person with lung cancer causing superior vena cava syndrome. Photo by James Heilman, MD. Via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States The fact Is they are there, gathered like a clutter of popcorn, some kernels, others fluffy white swirls, but they are there, bound to […]

Under the lime tree: medicine, poetry, and the education of the senses

September 10, 2021

Alan Bleakley Sennen, West Cornwall, United Kingdom Portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), by Peter Vandyke, 1795. Edited by Sue Bleakley. When in the summer of 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s wife Sara accidentally spilled hot milk over his foot, causing serious burns such that Coleridge could not walk, he sat in the garden of […]

Airs and graces: Humphry Davy and science as performance

September 10, 2021

Alan Bleakley Sennen, West Cornwall, United Kingdom A cartoon featured in an 1807 dissertation by a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania on the “chemical and exhilarating effects of nitrous oxide gas.” The two figures are almost certainly Davy to the right and perhaps Beddoes to the left. Credit: Bulletin of the Society […]