A depressing, inspiring, sobering, and thoughtful essay written about the herculean task of meeting death and illness well.

(from The New Yorker)

Life can bring absolutely terrible circumstances to our peaceful lives. A sudden phone call bearing grave news. A nauseatingly bad diagnosis. Financial anxiety. Self-doubt. An irreparable mistake. Guilt.

Stressors compound upon one another, and the psychological toll builds. In my office I am visited daily by a torrent of fears, heartaches, and tears from the pained faces of men, women, and children. I think the general state of the world and our acute, extraordinary economic hardships have amplified the occasional woeful visits into the norm.

I do my best to help, emptying my shallow pockets of whatever empathy, counseling, and medication I can find. Sometimes I can help, but for some the burdens are too great. And when the stressors in my own life abound it becomes even more difficult to take on others’ despair, although a more genuine sympathy rises.

Yet in our supposedly mundane lives, going through times of great adversity, the Heroic emerges. People fight cancer. People fight misery. People persevere in the face of ruin. Bruised and tattered and self-aware they cope with incredible pain, or pass honorably having so endured.

I sometimes wonder if I should write one-word prescriptions instead of, or in addition to, medicines to stabilize a tempestuous mood. Should I dispense “citalopram 20 mg 1 tab po qd #30” with my right hand, and “Courage” with my left?

In tense moments of my own life I often resort to focusing on one-word manifestos. I meditate on the heroic qualities of literary characters, family members, patients I’ve seen walking the plank before me. I try to drown out the internal anxious dialogue with a mantra-like ohm.

Bravery. Resilience. Strength. Beauty. Courage. Hope. Faith. Endurance. Light.

Perhaps these most powerful assemblages of letters deserve a mystical place on prescriptions, helping to conjure walls of stone in the besieged minds of those who meditate upon them?

It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of the poetry contest. Over 125 poems were received with a general theme of medicine or science. 7 judges were consulted, representing a diversity of training in medicine, science, and the humanities. A few of the judges were moved to tears at times, and all expressed their wonder at the quality of writing.

What makes art, poetry, or literature special? Perhaps it is a combination of graceful observation and hopeful creation which lends light, perspective, and meaning to our existence. We know it’s good when a certain hum of neuro-electricity splashes brilliant colors across our satisfied brains, soothing ills, making us want more.

So here are the top 5, as chosen by the esteemed judges! Congratulations, and may the awards given to the winner (money and a cherry tomato) bring a smile. Thank you to all who entered the contest.

Winner:
Fireflies, by a medical resident

Runner Up:
Song for my Father, II, by Pal MD

Honorable Mentions:
TO SYLVIA, by Maria A. Basile, M.D.
The Harvest, by C.L. Wilson
If I Were Frida Kahlo, by Amanda Hempel

And here are the poems:

Fireflies
~a medical resident

Hand clasps hand
on the window sill,
he in a paper-thin gown,
she in her Sunday dress.

Snow falls.
He craves the sting of crystals
on his tongue,
a shovel to carve a meandering path
to the front door.

And she –
a spark from dying embers
that once flushed his cheeks,
now sunken and pale.

Lilacs blossom.
He dug the earth for their resting place,
pruned them religiously,
watered their roots.

She filled glasses with branches
pouring over the rim –
a breath of lavender anticipation.

Heat rises.
He remembers capturing fireflies in jars
with punctured holes to breathe
and watching them through the night
as their lights flickered
then faded away.

She remembers
laughing at the red juice stains
from freshly picked raspberries
on their chins.

Leaves fall.
The crisp sun is distant
from the blurred shadows of the hospital bed.
The hurried migration of the birds
is silenced by the glass.

From the window,
they imagine the rush of delicate wings
headed south
and the imminent scent of autumn –

Burnt orange peels, smoky maple,
roasting pumpkin seeds.
Their lights flicker,
then fade away.

***

Song for my father, II
~Pal MD

“Say Ahh,” you said
as you pressed my tongue down
with the back of a spoon.

I can still taste the cold metal,
feel your warm hands, impossibly large
palpating my neck.

Doctor, father.

“No need to bother the doctor,” you said.
Your eyes showed no hint of bother.

So we went back to the bathroom
as I watched you set a new blade in your razor
hold a warm cloth to your face
lather yesterday’s whiskers.

I wondered where the old blade went.
A small slot in the back of the cabinet,
a mystery, like your newly shaved face,
betraying little of what was beneath.

Your copy of Cecil’s looks old,
like you.
The cover worn, the pages yellowed.
But you, a younger you on every page
Underlines, margin notes
expressions of wonder.

Maybe your face was stoic then
but you loved the mysteries
I can read it in every pen stroke.

It must have been a fountain pen.
I’ve always loved fountain pens
But I found them on my own.

You handed me your stethoscope
the rubber stiff with age
and said, “Go for it”
a smile breaking out,
cracking through an old psychiatrist’s
habitual stoicism.

“Daddy, my throat hurts.”

Sure, I think,
as I hold the spoon against her tongue
and palpate her impossibly small neck.

“I think a kiss will fix it,
no need to bother the doctor.”

She seems to agree.

***

TO SYLVIA
~Maria A. Basile, M.D.

I am the sun, in my white coat.
– Sylvia Plath

The surgeon at 2 a.m. is not where you think she is.
She is not waging war on cancer.
She is not resting her 9 month
belly near the belly of a sleeping patient. She
is not answering another
solace-seeking call
from you.

She is not visiting her
sickest of patients. She is not
loving the husband she tells everyone about, but
barely touches.

She is not paying the mortgage. She
is not taking care of herself.
She is not even feeding
her baby.

The surgeon at 2 a.m. is
stroking sunset blood on college-ruled
canvas, breathing blue
abandonment between lines,
drenching gauze decay in bleach
and lye.

She is writing
for her life.

***

The Harvest
~C.L.Wilson

She talks to them; knows that
although the remnant quiver
of a working nervous system at the knife’s point
is not awareness but only life’s
most rudimentary reaction, still she turns
this residual life into death by her hand,
and this one death into six lives or ten,
or sight, or new bone and ligament,
a new blood type, new scars, new hopes.
They cannot hear or see, but perhaps they know
that their last cut was made with love,
their last gift remembered. Such a cut
can never wound, could never sting.

***

If I Were Frida Kahlo
~Amanda Hempel

Perhaps a ten percent chance, he said.
My heart slid across his perfect white wall
and I shrank under my paper sheet.

If I were Frida Kahlo,
I would paint my cystic ovaries
in a pale green thunderstorm sky.

If I were Frida Kahlo, my uterus
would hang in churning clouds
raining blood above salted earth.

With no god to blaspheme,
I cursed traffic, potholes, the fact
that I already knew her name.

***

Thank you to each and every writer who entered the contest. I’ve learned a bit about running a contest, and hope to improve things for next year. It’s been a truly humbling, inspiring, and outstanding project for me to coordinate, and I very much hope that in reading and writing poetry you gain the same sense. Until next year, thank you.

Winner almost selected, one judge to go. Announcement this weekend 🙂

I’d like to thank all the contributors of poems for what has been an astoundingly fun project for me. Reading over 125 poems has been enlightening and inspiring. I regret that I ran out of time to post more selected highlights on the blog, but there are definitely poems in the running that have not been reposted. Real life has been insanely busy this month.

At this time I am collecting all the poems into a single document, which I will then distribute to a panel of 6 judges (myself, an English teacher, a medical school dean, an engineer, an artist, and a comparative literature guru). Each judge will give 3 points to their favorite, 2 points to a runner up, and 1 point to an honorable mention. The winning poem will have received the most points. In the event of a tie I will ask you the readers to break it.

Thank you for reading and contributing, and perhaps next year I will work out the kinks to allow everyone’s poem to be displayed.

The first annual Charles Prize for Poetry awaits!

Fireflies
~a medical resident

Hand clasps hand
on the window sill,
he in a paper-thin gown,
she in her Sunday dress.

Snow falls.
He craves the sting of crystals
on his tongue,
a shovel to carve a meandering path
to the front door.

And she –
a spark from dying embers
that once flushed his cheeks,
now sunken and pale.

Lilacs blossom.
He dug the earth for their resting place,
pruned them religiously,
watered their roots.

She filled glasses with branches
pouring over the rim –
a breath of lavender anticipation.

Heat rises.
He remembers capturing fireflies in jars
with punctured holes to breathe
and watching them through the night
as their lights flickered
then faded away.

She remembers
laughing at the red juice stains
from freshly picked raspberries
on their chins.

Leaves fall.
The crisp sun is distant
from the blurred shadows of the hospital bed.
The hurried migration of the birds
is silenced by the glass.

From the window,
they imagine the rush of delicate wings
headed south
and the imminent scent of autumn –

Burnt orange peels, smoky maple,
roasting pumpkin seeds.
Their lights flicker,
then fade away.

Thirteen Ways of Seeing
~Aidel Moodnick

I

[Streptococcus pyogenes]

Under the microscope
gram positive cocci in chains
like purple add-a-beads.

In the hospital bed
the modesty of human flesh is
abandoned
except for occasional little islands of skin,
soon to be the freshest wounds.

Without skin the patient is
hairless and bumpy and bloody and raw and
extremely vulnerable to infection.

There is no inside and outside,
only body without flesh.

II

Husband! Lend me your eyes
so that I might see what you see
and since seeing is an act of cognition,
you might as well throw in your brain.
Perhaps I will slip on your values as well,
to have a truer sense of your aesthetic.

But you can keep your emotions,
for I know them already, and frankly
your repertoire is limited.

III

I am not wearing my glasses
again
because I prefer the mish-mash
blur of colors
to the delineated definitions
and repetitive patterns
that are so sharp so stimulating
and sting my eyes to tears.

IV

A woman with a gold monocle
sits alone among her books
and takes pickled herring with her tea.

V

The crack across my mirror
presents a dilemma
over or under,
or hiding in between?

VI

Generations of girls have used a mirror
becoming cartographers of the landscapes
of their bodies.

Now there are textbooks with anatomically correct terms.
labeled drawings:
vagina, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris.

But my little girl will always have
a door that locks
and a mirror

and perhaps one day she will ask her lover
“Darling, shall I draw you a map?”

VII

Everybody knows what atoms look like
despite the fact that perhaps only
the severely autistic
can actually see them.

VIII

Little pink sleep goblins dart around my peripheral vision,
and I hear her call my name from very far away
with the inflection of a question.

IX

I live at the very bottom of the sea
and peek out with a periscope.
The constant rise and fall of the waves
the frequent toss, change of direction
just watching makes me seasick.
So I descend the ladder of the observation post
and burrow deeply in the lovely mud.

X

Through the window I see
a quiet playground
no children, only
one toy dump truck
on it’s side in the sand

XI

The doctor says: There is this
something something
that has somethinged
in your husband’s brain. OK?
Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

The nurse translates: your husband’s brain
is full of blood,
big as a grapefruit,
the skull is hard
and will not break or stretch or swell,
and his brain has squished down
through the hole in the back of the neck,
where his spinal cord should be.
He will die.
We cannot fix this, but
do you happen to know if he wanted
to donate his organs?

Please know that he did not suffer,
that there is nothing you could have done.

Is there anybody you would like me to call?

XII

Through my telescope in the corner apartment
on the forth floor
a beautiful woman who lives with her cat,
sits, reads and drinks tea.
I watch
because she is
as lovely as any woman
that I have ever seen.

XIII

The Voyager spacecraft photographed the Earth
from a distance
of six billion kilometers, a Pale Blue Dot.
In context, it turns out
that the sum of all we know
is no greater
than a spec of dust
floating along a sunbeam.