The Face
To have peeled back the sanguine face / The feat of passive genius now replaced / The strident stars succumbed to youthful grace / In half-scanned scalpels hot to nature’s plate.
Off the Shelf
Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member
Albany Medical College
Steven attends Albany Medical College as a student of the Class of 2017. Raised in Queens, New York, he earned a BA in English with a minor in Biology from Binghamton University in May 2013. Some of his interests include poetry, martial arts, traveling, and continental philosophy. He is currently aspiring to become a radiologist.
Acendemic: A Portmanteau
Who stands, the crux left of the watershed bearing with the catarrh of the twilight that sinewy sight that strove of sound unsaid. What lip eschews the running Muse, its maw on spring’s aphasic drear; uncounted seer quietly tearing from the height, appalled and short-stocked sitting on the wrested watch arranging useful cogs of livid ash to pride the fire of its balderdash; gone home and back again, aroused to taste taller than grass and …
An Unhealed Heart
He stood at the window, gazing out into the bleak, foggy morning. His fingers slowly traced words and symbols on the frost and then quickly wiped them away. His hands looked different he noted—the skin like tissue paper, thin and crisscrossed with fine lines. His veins raised and pulsing. He clenched his fist, wincing at the stiffness. He couldn’t remember when his hands changed. When they were last full and firm, strong enough to pick …
Life Song
In the key of crunching cartilage, embedded in a melody of broken hips, wrapped in a base line of nuts and bolts, metal syncopated to eruptions of pain up steep and narrow stairs, grey and receding memories line the corridor of this old house. it and I, we still remember the creaking of painful harmonies, storms approaching and penetrating these walls from the inside out, we breathe an asthmatic crescendo in time with the wind …
Hands
I know his hands so very well. I get beneath the skin. I discover what could make them tremble Or cause the dorsum hairs to stand on end. I intimately study these hands That are—or, were— Eighty-three years old. An image is permanently burned into my mind. I hold his hand to reposition his arm, As if it were that of a living person. I wonder who held it last Before I …
To Being Doctors-to-Be
We who were always overachievers. Who missed the dusk of our adolescence solving multiple-choice questions. We who began our adult lives spending alternate days with corpses. Who carry bones in our bags and books that break our backs. Who spend the best years of youth in the grime of wards. Who have already witnessed a lifetime’s share of deaths. Who learn about depression but fail to recognise it in ourselves. We who have no definite …
The Mild, Existential Adventures Past and Present of Javier Fitzsimmons, Dollar Store Teddy Bear
Author’s note: This piece will be published in the University of Alabama School of Medicine’s upcoming Voices in Word Literary Journal, published by its Narrative Medicine Interest Group. Descended from Spanish-English lineage but made in China, Javier Fitzsimmons’s brown, burly, furry form lay squished against the basket grating by the weight of a multitude of stuffed animals. In the 1500s after the wreckage of the Spanish Armada washed up along the English shores, a poor Spanish soldier …
Skin: Our Identity
The skin is the boldest yet most bashful organ of the body. Parts of it will be exposed to the world’s eye with no problems at all. However, other areas are so timid that they are only exposed on the most embarrassing or intimate of occasions. The skin can tell a person’s life story — it can expose the lifelong struggles and daily grind of a coal miner, the bad habits of a longtime smoker, …
Main Street Man
Stumbling through bus doors, he stomps mud-slated boots, grins me a brown-toothed “hey.” His ruffled voice drifts to me, as though we’re been siblings, or decade-long friends, and tonight’s moonless chat on the bus just another usual chat. He offers me a swig of his pink juice and when I refuse, he downs one until his face turns to a flamingo pink, and blood engulfs his cheeks. In the stuffy air softened by vodka, I …
With This Life: Ruminations on the Tensions Among Medicine, Art, and Advocacy
I want so much to put my art into the world, to share all that stuff that resides inside each of us and that for me falls somewhere between poetry, prose and prayer. But I also want to disappear from the earth, to take refuge in a singular devotion, like the nuns who ran the home for the children that I played with in my motherland. Part of me wants to wield policy and paperwork, …
A Day in the Life: First-Year Medical Student
The alarm rings. Its shrill screech jars him out of sleep and his eyes slowly open. He lays there a moment, listening to its piercing repetition. He considers falling back to sleep. After a moment he rolls out of bed and his feet hit the cold wood floor. He touches the top of the clock and the room falls back into silence. As the covers fall away, the chill from the morning air touches his …
Velocity of Movement (2012)
Velocity of Movement Kiran Sethi and Vincent Venincasa (2012) acrylic on canvas We hoped to capture the fast-paced atmosphere of the medical profession, highlighting the high-volume information system that we use to treat patients. While each individual stroke may seem trivial, when combined they form the full picture—that of a complex, but beautiful patient case. Exemplifying the importance of a well-versed physician in more than just medicine, we painted this piece solely through dance with …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
I am currently a Class of 2015 medical student at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. I attended college at the University of Miami. I am an avid sports fan and enjoy the humanities as well.