Laker Thrasher UW Hospital 2024 Poem On what I can only assume was a beautiful day Enrico Fermi proposed a problem that everyone understood a cosmic ouroboros head to tail, beginning to end the eternal return to the infernal question: Are we alone in the universe? And we’ll spend the rest of our lives…
All posts tagged poem
The places where you used to be
Farah Kaiksow, MD, MPP School of Medicine and Public Health 2024-5 Poem They said to wait a year. That you would make your way back to us. That you were strong (which we already knew). That miracles happen (it’s true). That the brain and body were magic. That we could learn to wait. So…
January 31, 2025
A.C. Mapes School of Medicine and Public Health 2025 Poem Days after the deep freeze, we watched a snowdrop try to bloom. Its petals were sheer and brittle, its flower open, but barely. Wind-beaten, tired, guarded— I knew the feeling. The cold pinched color back into my cheeks, but our arms…
In The Facility: My Parents Separated by Two Floors
Sharon M. Van Sluijs School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Pediatrics 2020 Poem My father can hear it faintly from the woods at the edge of the facility that now holds him, the barred owls’ cries. Late beneath January’s glassy black sky, two, a pair, toss out, again, again, their eerie barking…
hallway rendezvous
Andrea Gilmore Bykovskyi School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Emergency Medicine 2023 Poem beneath your despair and my anticipation we are both watching the same silent film: the end of an era. every death is new but the dance familiar you question, I gesture. I have a lot of important words for…
Transplanted (Four-Chambered)
Daniel Rortvedt, OTD, OTR/L Department of Kinesiology, Occupational Therapy 2024 Poem For John What’s built around us is affordance. A state of matter. An ice cube before it’s frozen. A mitral valve blushing into the left ventricle alongside the Allegheny River roiling over at breakneck speed. Can you fathom the distance between somewhere else and here…
Tour of Ancient Sites: Chysauster at Gulval, Near Land’s End
Sharon M. Van Sluijs School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Pediatrics 2006 Poem (sonnet) Even the frowzy cows I passed on the narrow, muddy path up here think it’s a mystery. Their eyes asked why this high grassy field, so near, is not theirs to graze. They have bellied the fence with…
Seat of darkness
Ryan McAdams, MD School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Pediatrics 2024 Poem Whispers in the wind led me to lonely land where once stood my family tree its Irish roots drank spirits until a cruel keen blade—sharp with wrath, jealousy and greed— split the trunk in two. Gnarled branches fell, oak and…
The Juggle
Bryce Lakin School of Medicine and Public Health 2023 Poem The juggle I feel it coming closely The juggle Performing for the stage Tossing problems from one hand to the other Watching them float in an arc Never gone Just not in my hand at the moment I’m not a good juggler I only…
An Incantation for Spring
A.C. Mapes School of Medicine and Public Health 2022 Poem Bloodroot, liverwort, wild ginger serve as a salve, balm, tonic, elixir. Forget Wellbutrin, won’t take Effexor— no chemical’ll solve a long, harsh winter. Sunshine brings a natural cure: watch purple fists of rue-anemone unfurl. Bloodroot, liverwort, wild ginger please be the salve, balm, tonic,…