An Ode to Paul Hoover
Secret / The caterpillar munching on hair / beneath your scrub cap
Poetry Thursdays
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.
Columnist
Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine
Mallory Evans is a third-year medical student at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Rochester, Michigan. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science degree in cellular and molecular biology and a minor in German. When not studying, you can find her running many miles on woodland trails, perfecting a black bean burger recipe, or saying answers to Jeopardy! out loud at the TV. One day she hopes to pursue a career in internal medicine and pediatrics and travel to at least one place on every continent.
This is Water
This is Water is an attempt at documenting intentional living. This column will strive to highlight the extraordinary meaning of the often unnoticed, and to greet the hard and joyful parts of the medical school experience with gratitude (even when, especially when, we don't feel like it).
2020
Some days, I only feel disillusion of the soul / that yearns for bear hugs, game nights, Nana’s pecan pie.
‘Twas the Block Before Step
‘Twas the block before Step, and all through the school / not a student was stirring — no one was a fool
Attack of the Meconium
5:00 am, the first day on the night shift, / six deliveries completed and only one hour remains. / A call from the nurse says the patient in 14 is five centimeters dilated, / and so we enter the room to rupture her membranes.
Centimeters
The clock strikes midnight and just like that, / she’s been laboring for 10 hours as expected, / time flies when you can’t feel contraction pain.
A Nation on My Shoulders
Failure was never an option for me. // Every time I fail… / I am reminded that I have let my country down.
The Broken Ones
Send us the broken, the battered, / “give me your tired, your poor,” / your torn and tattered.
To Be a Kid
Just a five-year-old kid / Yet always in and out of the hospital, / Since her first beautiful breath / Through each breath after, / With her life-giving / Yet ever-faltering lungs.
Bones & Bruises
Your bones are beautiful / And your bruises are art
Rising Out of the Ruin
I wish it were different — / Dying patients, struggling hospitals, overworked health care workers, / topsy-turvy economies, politicized safety precautions, and the / uncertainty / of tomorrow.
It Was Grief Speaking
We sit in a clumsy ring / under fluorescent lights, / halfway into the allotted one hour / before we realize that we are having / a conversation born a whole decade ago.
three machines
so one day / i can translate to my patients / what my family missed.
Contributing Writer
University of Washington School of Medicine
Kirsten is a second year medical student at University of Washington in Spokane, Washington class of 2023. In 2015, she graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Health and Societies. She enjoys trail running, watching bad Netflix reality TV shows, and reading in her free time. After graduating medical school, Kirsten would like to pursue a career in rural family medicine.