Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Toral Patel is a BS and MS graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in molecular biology. She is currently a Class of 2015 student at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, AL.
A frail man leaned against the wall, Gasping for breath, afraid to fall. The rest of him shivered in panic at the thought A heart attack, perhaps or a stroke, blood clot? “I must be going crazy,” repeated his heartbeat. “I must try to calm down and take a seat.” The doctors marched in with the test results and all, They lined up against the opposite wall. Explained to the patient the source of …
In that sweet primordial pause before knowing, before knowing you had that brilliant lub without whose cause my sinus would but sing for two. This small sound within the chamber mocks with flagrant range the mistook letter which does not describe the valve but more the knock of passion greater than mere muscle twitch. I have no way of knowing the golden disarray: how you would stare at tiring light pound the heart and dry …
At the start, it was Crisp Like the sound of a chilled cucumber Snapped in half briskly on a hot summer day Fresh In the novelty of all things A foreign state with foreign friends A foreign box to call a home. With time, it was replaced with The reek Of persistent formaldehyde Clinging to every pore And every item owned (despite relentless efforts to sterilize and compartmentalize) Its phantom stench in almost every aroma …
In the kitchen on the floor counting the tiles Again because the number slips Like all the other numbers slip Nothing can be proven this way or solved And when you call, you never mean to call the names you say are not the names You leave the windows open while the neighbors try not to see But sometimes it is pieced together A quilt like waves in a squall Electricity the thread A brilliant …
They say that when you sleep, you formulate memories. The last thing I see before I shut my eyes, are you part of them? You are my most intimate partner, The only one who shares my bed. What do you think of when you watch me sleep? Why do you not provide me with the safety I seek? I try so hard to hold you close, To fill in the holes, the gaps, in my …
Perhaps it was the persistent scare of the superbug that compelled the sun-riser to surrender to the notion that a coffee cup had been sullied by a minor fall: that the time perceived was unequal and unrelated to the speed of selfish microbes settling on the rim where his mouth was meant to be. The Unknown Soldier in his drowsy cadence assumed clumsy control over the machine while residents in loose blue pants were …
To have peeled back the sanguine face / The feat of passive genius now replaced / The strident stars succumbed to youthful grace / In half-scanned scalpels hot to nature’s plate.
Who stands, the crux left of the watershed bearing with the catarrh of the twilight that sinewy sight that strove of sound unsaid. What lip eschews the running Muse, its maw on spring’s aphasic drear; uncounted seer quietly tearing from the height, appalled and short-stocked sitting on the wrested watch arranging useful cogs of livid ash to pride the fire of its balderdash; gone home and back again, aroused to taste taller than grass and …
How can doctors-in-training utilize creative expression to cope with and explore the challenging process of becoming a doctor? Leah, a second-year medical student, shares two poems she wrote. In the first she addresses the struggles faced during her first year, and in the second she reflects on the experience of personal healing.
In the key of crunching cartilage, embedded in a melody of broken hips, wrapped in a base line of nuts and bolts, metal syncopated to eruptions of pain up steep and narrow stairs, grey and receding memories line the corridor of this old house. it and I, we still remember the creaking of painful harmonies, storms approaching and penetrating these walls from the inside out, we breathe an asthmatic crescendo in time with the wind …
I know his hands so very well. I get beneath the skin. I discover what could make them tremble Or cause the dorsum hairs to stand on end. I intimately study these hands That are—or, were— Eighty-three years old. An image is permanently burned into my mind. I hold his hand to reposition his arm, As if it were that of a living person. I wonder who held it last Before I …
Stumbling through bus doors, he stomps mud-slated boots, grins me a brown-toothed “hey.” His ruffled voice drifts to me, as though we’re been siblings, or decade-long friends, and tonight’s moonless chat on the bus just another usual chat. He offers me a swig of his pink juice and when I refuse, he downs one until his face turns to a flamingo pink, and blood engulfs his cheeks. In the stuffy air softened by vodka, I …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine
I am currently studying at the University of British Columbia, with an interest in internal medicine, global health, and socioeconomic justice.
