Poetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Commonality and Difference by Steve Granzyk he development of a body of scientific knowledge about disease and illness necessarily identifies commonality—both of etiology and of remedies—yet healthcare itself must be sensitive to individuals and their specific circumstances. So too in the arts—in poetry—writers have learned from established practices of the past, and forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, or the ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Frances is staring at her plate by Maya Wahrman Frances is staring at her plate her eyes are going in and out of focus on a few stray peas, I wouldn’t be able to tell except that her whole body is rocking forward and backward, forward and backward, she .......is a rowboat stranded in the middle of the ocean but moving, moving to a shore no one can see, .......“Frances,” Jill ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 The Sentence by Louis Faber The Sentence “Probable metastatic lesions secondary to breast cancer.” Complex words set at the bottom of a page, impenetrable jargon. Two spots where pelvis and spine are joined, where motion fulcrums down legs, a torso and its twin concavities lever up, fold down, torque in slow rotation living. The words stare out from the page; defiant, aberrant cells nestling bone foretell a pillow blanketed in hair, rosy skin sheltering burning flesh beneath. I offer platitudes, empty aphorisms neither she nor I believe. For me self-serving ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Two Poems by Fraser Sutherland From a Hospital Bed If I push you away, do not think that I reject your love, or your being seen to love. What I resist is your, anyone’s, power to make me another, at the moment, someone shown to be in need, who must display the allegory of suffering. Since, in my hurting, I hurt you, forgive me. This is all I have left, my body, its control or lack of ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Radiograph by Mantz Yorke Radiograph The terminator killing brightness with shadow, a moon on the wane.Mantz Yorke is a former science teacher and researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems have appeared in a number of print magazines, anthologies, and e-magazines in the UK, Ireland, Israel, Canada, the US, Australia, and Hong Kong. His collection Voyager will be published in February 2020.
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 The Places Where They Fell by Sue Fagalde Lick The Places Where They Fell We’ve mopped the blood and piss away. The bandage wrappers and needle caps are gone. A stranger wouldn’t know, but I still see my father on the kitchen floor, black hair stuck to the edges of the walls, left leg shattered into bits. I see him in the backyard, too, by the faucet near the patio. With a broken hip, ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Beating, Like a Drum by Kathi Hansen s the yoga teacher whispers us back from Savasana, I sense that she’s disappeared the grim reaper; even, apparently, from the dark recesses of the elderly woman softly snoring in the corner. But when I open my eyes I catch the glint of his scythe. He’s there, though moving backward, away from me, bending into Utkatasana—chair pose. He ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 The Way We Say Goodbye by Denize Springer oe’s face is the color of salt. His head, flopped to one side, floats above the crisp white sheet his wife has tucked tight around his failing body. Irma shifts from one foot to the other. She’d like to tell her brother that he reminds her of a burrito, but she suspects Helen wraps him so because she ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Tense by A.E. Santana he living-room apartment had an overlay of warm light Carlota hated. The light came from the floor lamp her fiancé, Noah, had bought for her at a yard sale a year ago. She wanted to change out the yellowish light bulb for a white one, but was afraid of hurting his feelings. So she left it. As Carlota settled onto the worn ...
Read MoreIssue #3 Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 Table of Contents Letter from the Editor: We Will Not Quit Cover Image: Sophia. Elgin, Texas. Photo by Alyssa Schukar. Graphic Medicine: PSM Talks with MK Czerwiec Czerwiec discusses her comics and the philosophy of graphic medicine. Letter from the Fiction Editor: Shared Experiences The Way We Say Goodbye | Denize Springer Estate Sale | Charles Duffie Tense | A.E. Santana Beating, Like a Drum | Kathi Hansen Review: The Pervert | A. M. Larks“How Do ...
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