UC Berkeley Perspectives in Medical Humanities Title Tell Me Again: Poetry and Prose from The Healing Art of Writing, 2012 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6bx6q0wx ISBN 9780988986534 Author Baranow, Joan Publication Date 2013-12-28 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California tell me again Perspectives in Medical Humanities Perspectives in Medical Humanities publishes scholarship produced or reviewed under the auspices of the University of California Medical Humanities Consortium, a multi-campus collaborative of faculty, students and trainees in the humanities, medicine, and health sciences. Our series invites scholars from the humanities and health care professions to share narratives and analysis on health, healing, and the contexts of our beliefs and practices that impact biomedical inquiry. General Editor Brian Dolan, PhD, Professor of Social Medicine and Medical Humanities, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Recent Titles Clowns and Jokers Can Heal Us: Comedy and Medicine By Albert Howard Carter III (Fall 2011) The Remarkables: Endocrine Abnormalities in Art By Carol Clark and Orlo Clark (Winter 2011) Health Citizenship: Essays in Social Medicine and Biomedical Politics By Dorothy Porter (Winter 2011) What to Read on Love, not Sex: Freud, Fiction, and the Articulation of Truth in Modern Psychological Science By Edison Miyawaki, MD; Foreword by Harold Bloom (Fall 2012) Patient Poets: Illness from Inside Out By Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (Spring 2013) www.UCMedicalHumanitiesPress.com [email protected] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Dean of the School of Medicine at UCSF, the Center for Humanities and Health Sciences at UCSF, and a Multi-Campus Research Program Grant from the University of California Office of the President. tell me again Poetry and Prose from The Healing Art of Writing, 2012 EDITED BY Joan Baranow, PhD David Watts, MD First published in 2014 University of California Medical Humanities Press in partnership with California Digital Library San Francisco - Berkeley © 2014 University of California Medical Humanities Consortium 3333 California Street, Suite 485 San Francisco, CA 94143-0850 Designed by Lesley Benedict Library of Congress Control Number: 2013957683 ISBN 978-0-9889865-3-4 Printed in USA Table of Contents Terri Mason • poems Kindly Remove Your Shoes 1 Strong Medicine 2 Themes 3 David Scronce • poems My Eden 4 In a New Place 5 I Walk Out to See if I Recognize the Blue Flowers 6 Jenny Qi • poems Letters to My Mother 7 Playing Dead 8 The Last Visitation 9 Norma Smith • prose House Calls 10 Marisa Bois • poems Grandfather Sits Under Eucalyptus Tree 13 I Press My Finger to Your Palm 14 Hush 15 Nina Schuyler • essay A Character’s Desires 16 Karen Kent • poems The Bowl 19 True North 21 Dawn Gross • prose Violet 22 GI Bleeding 28 Mr. Rogers 33 Catharine Clark-Sayles • poems Mercy 38 The Truth in the Rooms 40 Words Beyond Words 42 Burning 43 Gina Catena • prose Aha! 44 Eric Hucke • poems Flying the Hump 51 Everybody Gets Something 53 A Reprieve 55 John Fox • essay Letting the Light In (And Creative Ways to Spread It Around) 57 Ruth Saxey-Reese • poems blue hour 65 veni, columba 67 Dear Mr. Haynes, 68 Sarah Paris • poems Summer Breeze 69 Must I Show It To Her? 70 Ask Her Why She Drinks 72 Fran Dorf • prose Plastic Man 73 Paul Watsky • poem The Healing Casebook 86 Meg Neuman • prose He has drifted back to sleep 87 Alicia Ostriker • essay Metaphor and Healing: Or, Why Metaphor is Not a Bandage 88 Joan Baranow • poems By now 97 You’d Like to Know 98 Checking Margins 98 February and plum trees in bloom 99 Suzanne Tay-Kelley • poems Gelato 100 Starstruck 100 First Date 101 Susan Moldaw • prose Spinning Through the Heavens 102 Eric Chang • poems Rosina on the Table 107 Soneto LXVI 109 Range 111 Deborah Steinberg • prose Pain Map 112 The High Wind 114 Balcony 115 Marilyn Krysl • essay Litany 116 Joanne Clarkson • poems The Oldest Sense 121 They Had Already Made Love 123 Watching for Morning 124 LeeAnn Bartolini • poems French Kissing the Earth 125 HER EYES 126 Starting to work the California garden in winter 127 Katie Amatruda • prose Something Always Knows 128 Bahareh Amidi • poems Tomorrow’s Poem 143 What If I Knew 144 The Size of My Foot Print 144 Dawn McGuire • poem Considering Love in a Strip Mall Laundromat 145 Adam Luxenberg • prose Two Deaths and a Lesson 146 Julianna Waters • poem Jim’s Prescription 154 Molly Giles • essay Odds on Ends 156 Martha Lunney • prose Push! 166 Fran Brahmi • poems Hydrangeas 168 As she lay dying 169 Night Rounds 170 Wendy Patrice Williams • prose My Mother’s Ears 171 David Watts • essay My Ellis Experiment: Writing Two Sides of Consciousness 181 Kindly remove your shoes Kindly remove your shoes as you enter the forest. Everyone here knows your name. It’s not formal, just necessary. Make yourself at home among the roots. We’ve been waiting for you. You were homeless in your parents’ house, Jobless at work. What do you have to lose besides everything you have known? No questions of like or dislike here, only deep engines without machines. Come join us, we provide shelter between rocks and hard places. Here leaves lie down, become soil. Leave your worries on the doorstep and dream a blue dream for time being. 2 The Healing Art of Writing v.2 Strong Medicine When they tell me to do my laundry separately, because chemicals will leak out in my clothes, I know I am taking strong medicine. I think of my copal wood snake with the lump in her middle. She reminds me that anything can be swallowed and transformed. Normal shifts along a spectrum of extremes. An IV pole has become my companion, portable asp tethered to my breast by two needle fangs. One drug rubies, toxic to the heart. The other, clear silent, discovered at war kills tumors along with soldiers. Both seep into my blood as I watch TV, eat dinner, walk through the halls. Yet all feels safe, familiar. This journey I’m taking that will not repeat. The Healing Art of Writing v.2 3 Themes scar A dry riverbed traces the ancient channel pink cliffs rise from the gorge chemo Great dieoffs and rebirths herds of cells flee lava from the volcano hospital Beached on high white sheets night long rustlings, air in line alarms snores of my roommate memorial Wish I could turn to Ann and ask what she thinks of the speeches dream When the wildebeest lunges I struggle between the impulse to run or to engage home My hair is growing back the pink naked ladies bloom in late summer 4 The Healing Art of Writing v.2 My Eden I give you this spider’s web Glinting from a tree. I give your neck a rub, I cover your back with lotion, I lay you in the sun. A little heat. I give you a glass of water, a quiet walk, A dog, or a cat, take your pick. If you prefer, a svelte giraffe. I give you mountains, marshes, wading birds, The laughter of plumage you barely recognize. I give you shantytowns of tin With wild shebangs for drinking in. I give you Ko Un, Gerald Stern, Every book I love, every line I’ve learned. I give you drapery, or none, An empty room for dancing in. I give you a drum, a violin, A troupe of players wandering Your narrow streets, serenading. I give you rivers and shores, teeming avenues, Walt Whitman. I never give you war. I give you orchards, walled gardens, Stone fruit in season, citrus after. I give you bread and water. The Healing Art of Writing v.2 5 In a New Place However beautiful, you don’t feel safe. You marvel at the rhododendrons, the prostrate bamboo. Still, a shyness comes over you, Awkward when you greet an asking face. You want to take a swim but first you drive To buy a bigger bathing suit. Would more coverage make you less conspicuous? Lots of local families at the pool. You swim your laps but don’t relax. Heading for the showers, some boys follow you Followed by their father, who hustles them “You can shower at home.” Dressed, you think you’ll take a different route. A neighbor’s boxer blocks your path. You’re grateful for her grip upon the leash. You find you’ve circled back, A pre-scoped restroom, you know the tricky light Switch. You’re practically autochthonous. Now to find a bench, a shady patch From which to savor the afternoon. You choose “Penny Jackson, 1938-2010, Professor of English, Expander of Souls.” Perhaps the lettered dead can comfort you. You press against the armrest Until you feel your ribs are bruised. Among the leaves beneath your seat A glint, a coin, lightweight, stamped China. Your luck may change. You pocket this. It’s getting hot. You move to deeper shade And watch three silent deer mince past. You lie down on your back. Cloudless. Crepe Myrtle. Bees diving blooms. 6 The Healing Art of Writing v.2 I Walk Out to See if I Recognize the Blue Flowers As I round the boxwood hedge, Of course, I think, they’re poppies. I know this is wrong but I can’t find their name. I stare into their open faces. The closest I get is “Viola” But that’s the family. My language faculty’s deranged. Three times in two days Someone says “trauma” and I want to weep.