From My Hospital Bed
Where do the squirrels go / during the rain? / Can they hear the thunder? / Can they feel my pain?
Tag: poetry
Writer-in-Training
University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Hello! My name is Damien and I'm a student at the University of South Florida's College of Medicine. I was born and raised on the island of Antigua, and have been writing poetry and fiction for years. I hope you enjoy my work!
Memoirs of a Machine
I cut where I am told, my arms moving with mechanical precision, / Following imaginary lines running throughout the body.
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.
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Erin is a Class of 2016 medical student. She has a B.A. in English. She took a year off before medical school to work as a Emergency Medicine scribe, and to learn how to make cupcakes from scratch. She enjoys discovering the story-telling inherent in every patient encounter.