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
Tag: poetry
Contributing Writer
Yale School of Medicine
Bridging the divide between the biomedical and social sciences, Jes enjoys her unique position as an anthropology MD-PhD student to advocate for social justice at Yale. Apart from academics and service, Jes relishes the chance to overfeed guests in the style of her Italian-Chilean upbringing and to dance until she bursts into laughter. Follow her on Twitter @jes_minor
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.
Poetry for Medical Students
When my classmates ask me to recommend poems for reading, I am always thrilled to share my favorite poems. After sharing, I sometimes ask myself the following questions: What am I recommending exactly? How can reading poetry benefit my classmates? How has reading poetry helped me, if it even has? These are important questions to think about, particularly when thinking about how to prioritize reading poetry alongside other activities; this would not be unlike using triage to assign priority for treatments.
Stethoscope
I came to be in 1816, Before then I was never seen. During my birth tuberculosis ran wild, I think it is fair to say I saved the life of a child. I arose from the astute mind of Monsieur Laënnec, I bet you did not detect my French accent. I’m often found around your neck, Nowadays I can get pretty high-tech. Sometimes I float in your white coat pocket, But …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Lindsay Boyers is a medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine with an interest in dermatology. She graduated magna cum laude from University of California Santa Barbara in 2009 with a degree in Communications and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She enjoys both clinical medicine and research, having taken a year to conduct research at the University of Colorado in the department of dermatology. She enjoys the arts, especially painting and writing, and spending time with her family in Colorado.