Editorial Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Letter from the Editor: A Hero's Journey by Tracy Granzyk n our twelfth issue, themed Diagnosis, our artists once again come to the rescue of the human spirit when facing illness. Similar to the hero’s journey described by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” stories with this structure begin with an ordinary character called to adventure. She or he must face and overcome several challenges along ...
Read MoreFilm Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Diagnosis: Short Film as Medical Memoir by M Tamara Cutler n 2001 I was turning thirty, in a new relationship, and starting graduate film school. I was also diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I asked a classmate to film my experience. I wanted documentation for a future date when I was ready to process it. Viewing the film for the first time since the screening twenty years ago, I ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Three Poems by Linda Lamenza Diagnosis: Wrecked The curse is the mark, like Alpine Swiss, across my fifth metatarsal. Sometimes it’s a map, or Monet’s Water Lilies in deep reds and pinks, wrecked by someone’s SUV, a ghoulish work of art by Saturday’s driver. Linda Lamenza reads “Diagnosis: Wrecked”: Honda Pilot Truth is the purple swollen disaster of my foot, where her tire wrecked me in the Mobil parking lot. My right elbow a shattered bone I can no longer lean on. Now, I’m a part of ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Lighter by Diane D. Gillette enter the ER with little more than my Wonder Woman hat, a library book I've barely begun to read, and a pain that is only familiar to those of us with an unruly uterus. I'm greeted by a sign that says it will be more than five hours before I can see a doctor, and I hope the book is a good ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Magnetic North by Dagne Forrest Magnetic North And so it may start here, in the doctor's office, in front of a no longer blank page, or at home when I find myself unmoored from a body whose borders I can’t define. The edges of unknowing begin to recede like the thickened ice that pulls away from the pond's ragged shore, leaving a dark liquid space unadorned and much too deep though it's just a thin rift. Nothing a late snow couldn't cover like ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Poetry Letter from the Poetry Editor: Diagnosis: Bravely Finding A Path Forward by Steve Granzyk Magnetic North | Dagne Forrest Automata, My Apartment (Newly Disabled), ++++Siege (Chronic Pain) | Rebekah Bartlett Exam Rooms are Often Windowless, ++++Grandma's Letters-Just Another Mortal | Amy Haddad Clinical | Mary Birnbaum CVA, Make the Call, Long Hauler | Joe Amaral Kally, Prepare the Poison, Apheresis | Aria Dominguez After the Doctor's Call | Joan Mazza Surfacing, Blood Journey, Anemia | Deborah Meltvedt The Thing Is, ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Putting the Top Down by David Blistein id’s twenty-third radiation treatment took place on the fall equinox—a day when he’d seen fire and he’d seen rain…and hurricanes and heat waves and cold snaps and boring gray season-less in-between days that were neither warm enough to feel like summer nor chilly enough to feel like fall. Days when the leaves had either turned color a few days early or ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 To by Lee Eustace To: Eight Months Pregnant Me Cc: The Mother I Am Bcc: The Mother I Wanted to Be Subject: After the birth Dear Versionist Me, Yes. Well done. You’ve read the baby books. “What to Expect,” “How to Cope,” “First Time Parents.” They all look familiar, don’t they? Well, here’s my first tip – reading those books doesn’t mean a fraction of what you think when that baby does ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Finally Dead by Myra Seles ooking back, I knew I wanted my wife of 26 years to die after her epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosis--Stage 4; five-year survival rate. Five years was too long. The Wednesday she got diagnosed my heart lodged in my boney knees and boney elbows. Not in the way where your heart races and then completes the race and slows to normal. No. This time my heart ...
Read More