Poetry Thursdays is our initiative to highlight poetry and prose by medical students, with a new post every Thursday. If you are interested in contributing or would like to learn more, please contact our editors.
we dozed on a mattress rattling overtop the yellow line, dreams buzzing to the arrival of each subway car. how hard we fought to wake together, and walk among hundreds on this cold palate of concrete, between the pointed teeth of buildings, unclear if in these shadows we are sheltered, as mouthbrood roe, or simply waiting, to be consumed. Poetry Thursdays is an initiative that highlights poems by medical students. If you are interested …
I stepped into your home in a short white coat You asked me what year I was in I answered, I asked you how your day was You told me, “it is as good as it gets!” (smiling) As you count down the days I think to myself (nervously) We both are counting down the days But the way you’ve chosen to peer at future days is One I will never forget One we will …
Baby powder, body odor Dark red blood, pale white skin A mother’s cry, a baby’s silence Image Credit: “Baby Feet” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Joseph D’Mello Poetry Thursdays is an initiative that highlights poems by medical students. If you are interested in contributing or would like to learn more, please contact our editors.
This was my patient. I sat with her, held her hand, coaxed her to share pieces of her life story from underneath the covers.
A spoken word piece dedicated to the generous donors and their families of the Donor Body Program at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
Waiting in the snow for the 43, / Mind focused on the cold. / The bitter wind, the bus kneeling
My patient sleeps peacefully. / I wake him guiltily. / I don’t want my face to be the first he sees.
As you search your closet / For your scrub cap, / Stethoscope, / And pants,
I am moving, yet I am going nowhere. I am going nowhere, yet I have come a long way. I do not count how many go by, but each spin demands that I keep moving. With every rotation, I take another step, another leap, one jump on this Earth. These cycles fly by, so much so that I can almost hear them as they whoosh over my head in an instant, making seconds go slow.
A bag full of dreams was all my mind possessed, / To leave my mark on the turbulent sands of time and be respected,
Finally, it’s been three months since // He and I were strangers with bad blood, / breathless in bed, / discussing the acts of giving and / receiving as indulgences, / mulling over our motivations and / the contraindications for / charity.
this weekend / I went to the sunflower patch / swinging arms with my mom and sister / starry eyed at the fields of bright gold yellow / nestled in the blue of the mountains around us.
Writers-in-Training Intern and Contributing Writer
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine
Nima is a medical student at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida, Class of 2024. In 2019, she graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience and biology, with minors in creative writing and medicine and society. Nima enjoys gardening, cooking, and painting in her free time. After graduating medical school, Nima would like to pursue a career in family medicine with a focus on community health and lifestyle medicine.
