Flounder

Daniel Funk School of Pharmacy 2022 Poem   Construct a bridge to Pulley Ridge Designed one hundred miles long. For paradise, it’s worth the price; The fish abound in patient throngs. Groom me a beach on Big Pine Key And terraform its foreign shore With golden sand from distant lands— Home’s plastic luxuries galore! Release…

Cameron Haight

Kristy Wendt School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery-Otolaryngology 2022 Poem   For two and a half centuries the prognosis for esophageal atresia was death by aspiration until a cold day in the last week of winter, when a listless infant, twelve days old, mouth bleeding, was referred to Cameron Haight, There wasn’t…

Witnesses

Nasser Lubega, MS III School of Medicine and Public Health 2021 Poem   (Epigraph: Over the summer, a violent act was performed on a person I love, and I never got to say goodbye. One was a father, and the other his son.) When the evening drew near, I pulled you in with a choreographed…

Time

Daniel McNeela School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics 2014 Poem   Existence is meant to burn in structured candescence, the lighting of a candle, hot melting of wax. This extolled by man who thought, in all his vainglory, to make structured time by casting it in the accruable tick—…

The Siren

Ariel Niforatos School of Medicine and Public Health 2021 Short story   She walks in endless fields of sorrow in a world she cannot name and through streets that end without destinations. She dances through lonely alleys and backstreets with only the wind pushing her forward and blowing through her hair with an illusion of…

An Ode to Francis Collins

Chris Unterberger School of Pharmacy 2021 Poem   Longtime NIH director, Francis Collins, announced his resignation of the post last week. For the past twelve years, Dr. Collins has served as the head of the most important health institution in the nation while guiding the country’s scientific research under three presidents. Before becoming director of…

Lung Song

Dana Maya School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery 2021 Poem   1. You saw it too: a man strangled, his last breath taken. That summer the sickness that stole breaths came, the streets were in flames, our lungs filled with shouts that felt like fire, the forests filled with smoke that summer,…

In Sickness and In Health

Madison Kranz School of Nursing 2021 Prose/flash fiction   He gently places the dish towel over the broken glass, trying not to cut himself. He knows the small fragments will scratch their new table, but that’s the last thing on his mind. She sits on a stool at the breakfast bar, knees pulled to her…

Voiceless

Nithin Charlly School of Medicine and Public Health 2021 Poem   Coughing through the night As if he were a dog barking  Lips pursed, clubbed nails, cachexic  His pack of cigarettes lit nearby  Providing just enough warmth  From the cool evening  To make this nightly routine worth it  I asked them Is Uncle Rohan okay?…