Poetry’s Use of Metaphor for What Happens Inside and Outside the Body. A reflection by writer R. A. Pavoldi

Though just in my late 30’s at the time, my doctor referred me to a cardiologist because of a family history of heart disease

Visiting the family cemeteries often, the stones then looked back with deeper meaning. Men dying in their 30’s and 40’s. Heart disease, death certificates read. Still, no big deal, I got a heads-up, and had options they never had the luxury of.

My poem “LDL” was written during an old house renovation and preparing for an anatomy and physiology exam (I was also patching together a non-traditional Bachelor’s degree). I found it peculiar that I had no real fear of death, only of being somewhere without my wife.

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A Poem of Thanks: A Reflection by Poet/Physician Dianne Silvestri

I wanted my note to sound grateful, but the words couldn’t mask my sorrow over my alienation from any familiar or valuable path. I had lived through transplantation of a stranger’s stem cells into me. The mandatory one year of donor anonymity had passed. Surely I must send thanks to the donor whose cells were keeping me alive. But three years swept me back and forth from the hospital, trying to survive infections and graft-vs-host attacks. I saw my husband’s head shake “no” to each next draft I attempted.

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At the End of a Call Shift, Who Gets to Go Home? A reflection by Angela Tang-Tan

Every now and then, at the end of a call shift, I leave the hospital with aching feet and heavy eyelids. And then I remember: I am the lucky one. I am the one who gets to go home. My patients – the grandfather whose kidneys are failing, the ten-year-old with meningitis – are not so lucky. They will not go home tonight. They may never go home again.

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Art as a Body’s Blessing: A Reflection by physician-poet Sarah Piper

Even with the astonishing knowledge of medicine, the anatomy of an illness cannot fully be known from the outside. It takes an act of tender and careful acquaintance. And the only one who can truly map the illness of a living being is the occupant of an ill body. The geography of sickness is mysterious: its borders begin vague, its peaks conceal its valleys, its oceans rove and deepen and rearrange patterns of flood and firm ground.

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Our Body is an Ecosystem: A reflection by Jeanne Yu

I came across two Intima pieces in conversation with my recently published poem, “Mercury, A Public Service Announcement” When I was younger, I took my body for granted. I thought medical science or pharmaceuticals would patch all my future ills. Wanting to live life to the fullest made it difficult in my busy life to do more than what was needed at that moment and then move on ... but as I age, I find my body has kept score and is less resilient.

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Poetry and Palliative Care, a reflection by writer Dan Yashinsky

I’m writing in response to Danielle Snyderman’s Field Notes essay “Not Yet, The Epilogue” (Spring 2021 Intima).  I wrote the poem “The Trail to Ahous Bay” to read aloud to my friend Joan Bodger.  She was in the palliative care unit of Tofino Hospital on Vancouver Island.  I had come from Toronto to visit with her, and to say goodbye.  I was staying on Vargas Island, a short boat ride from Tofino, and had taken the cross-island hike that became the poem. 

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On Subtraction: Understanding What's Lost and Gained in Clinical Encounters by Abby Wheeler

I recognized right away a kinship with Bessie Liu’s “Variations on the Negative Space Before Healing” (Fall 2023) and its use of subtraction to create new meaning; The poem by Liu, a third-year medical student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. very much feels like a sister to my poem, At the Doctor’s Office, I Check, Yes, I Have Experienced the Following: Sudden Weight Loss (Fall 2023).

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On Work-Worn Hands and Gestures of Love, a short essay by poet and educator, Joan Baranow

A writer and poet honors the memory of her mother by finding the parallels between her own work and the story of another mother and daughter.

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Let Me Speak My Free Mind into You: Seeking Genuine Connection in Medical Practice

A medical student examines two poems published in this journal in order to advocate for genuine connection in medical practice between patients and physicians.

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Desensitization to the Face of Death: A reflection by poet and medical student Catherine Read

A medical student examines the desensitization that imbues the study and practice of medicine—and advocates against it.

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