Nonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Merry Migraines by Erin Darrow hristmas lights blink on and off, on and off, sparkling and winking merrily in tune with the Carol of the Bells. Ding, dong, ding, dong. Sharp pine scent underlaced with cinnamon and cloves. Winter and snowflaked pine branches and holly jolly. Multi-colored spots blink in my eyes as if someone has taken my photograph. Splotchy rainbow after-images stick to my closed eyelids. They won't go away ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Harvey Is Inside My Head by Deborah Meltvedt have a cat inside my head. I like to think they found him on the CT scan of my brain and lungs but it turns out he was such a part of my insides that nobody batted an eye. That CAT scans don’t scan cats. Harvey was just there in the lurching. A cartoon firing from brain to hand, ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Three Poems by Joe Amaral CVA Cerebrovascular accident: brain bleed in the gears of our human machinery. We detect the obvious signs and symptoms of injury with the acronym BEFAST: Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, Time. Asymmetrical hemiplegia, say “squeeze.” Only one side works, the other paralyzed or markedly weak. Word salad, alphabet soup, blurred vision, slurred speech. Ataxia, like trying to say “chisel” in a single syllable . . . impossible. We obtain a blood sugar, an ECG, blood pressure (too high), start an ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Three Poems by Rebekah E. Bartlett Automata The tapes burn into my skin. The machine drubs back my rhythm. Around me tumble words: Arrhythmia, p-waves, systolic as the doctors’ murmur over my heart’s sudden antics. Strange, how often I begged that heart to break in grief, rage, despair; wondered it could endure such pain to no good end. And now it is breaking, I see it was not mine to command, was never a heart of sighs and words but a clockwork, timebound ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Clinical by Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum Clinical The doctor swans into the examination room in a white capsule of ennui, weary. The patient loosens her paper cover, attempts a smile through the bureaucratic crackle, naked except for the timid white cotton over shopworn breast and middle-aged belly. She points to her thigh: a speck that must be obvious to the dullest ignoramus is merely a dermatofibroma . . . . the doctor’s fingernail scratches a desultory red note on ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Two Poems by Amy Haddad Exam Rooms Are Often Windowless When we first arrived hours ago, it was sunny, now pouring. We hear the drum roll of rain on the metal roof, the damp complaints of thunder. We sat in the big waiting room well past my appointed time, then finally felt a lift of hope when we were herded back into this airless box of a room, only to continue the long wait for my pathology ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 After the Doctor's Call by Joan Mazza After the Doctor's Call She’s got the words stuck in her head, another song you can’t turn off, worse than It’s a small world after all. It’s a word string with a beat: metastatic pancreatic cancer. The tune plays over and over, written today for her father. It’s like that childhood jingle on black and white TV. You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent. Finally sleep. ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Three Poems by Aria Dominguez Kally It is she whose palms welcomed me into this world, catching my bloody body, not dropping me. Thirty five years later, she phones to say my husband’s test results won't be in ‘til morning, but be ready to come to the hospital. It’s her weekend off, but she’ll watch for them, and will call. Before hanging up, a pause. I should know that one cause of this condition could ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Two Poems by Paul Hostovsky The Thing Is All the things that can go wrong with a body could fill a book. Lots of books. A whole medical library. But the thing is, there’s no point in naming them here. Names that are sometimes long and sometimes short, sometimes Greek and sometimes Latin. And sometimes the person who first noticed, studied, and isolated a thing that went wrong with a body ends up giving his ...
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