Memoirs of a Machine
I cut where I am told, my arms moving with mechanical precision, / Following imaginary lines running throughout the body.
Tag: poetry
Contributing Writer Emeritus
New York Medical College
Joshua Liu is a Class of 2015 year medical student at New York Medical College. He'll be starting his Internal Medicine Residency at OHSU in June 2015. He considers himself a part-time medical student and a full-time escapist. He blogs regularly at Young Doc Blog, where he doles out useful tips for needy medical students.
Cutting
Everyone / in this cold / room is dead.
When You Come to Me: Baltimore 2015
If you came to me then, / I might have smeared salve / into the keloid stripes / ripped into your back
Significant Breaths
A flannel button-up and house shoes wear a man / Sitting to my left, with a right ear just trying to keep up appearances; / Just as deaf to the / echo of firework safety / Then, / As to my voice / Now.
Death with Dignity
Whenever someone hang glides, / They pick a place to land. / Somewhere soft and somewhere close, / Somewhere that they planned.
M/R/G
Stunted by the shadow of its flow / pouring, rumbling in a lifelong swing / through the raging heart of darkness rings / the steadfast drip: a weak and lonely bruit, / and pitting insult in the turbid skin / with shocking faults to grimly thinning walls / the fallen house still stands; the flagging strands / and edematous sands chafe the burning soles.
Burnout
Burnout / They say dreamers aren’t doctors / So they kill the dream / Tests with trivial details we have barely seen, / let alone remember.
Powerless
“He is beyond the help of human aid” / He quoted from the big book / He stared directly at me as he spoke / And that one line was all it took
Anatomical Variation
A poem about gross anatomy from our writer-in-training Damien Zreibe.
An Afternoon with a Swazi Boy
A poem from our writer-in-training Brent Schnipke about his experience abroad.
Autopsy of a Child
A poetic reflection on shadowing in the medical examiner’s office.
Communicating: Pediatric Problems
“I have diabetes.” Shadowing at a pediatric endocrinology office, I was told this statement by a four-year-old patient. As weeks passed, I could not stop thinking about it.
Contributing Writer
George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Alexa is in the Class of 2018 at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences.