 | Memories of an Unhealed Past | Katrina Bakhl Abstract art piece inspired by a medical student’s reflections on grief and wanting to become a physician Asking someone why they decided to become a doctor is one of the most vulnerable questions you can ask a physician. I had acknowledged at the time of applying to medical … | 2026-01-06 10:36:11 |
 | Operation | Iain Grinbergs My grandfather was a double amputee. He was not in a literal war—just one that, looking back, was in his mind. What convinces me about my grandfather having his own war is that my mother, not long ago, said that when he was working on the motorways outside … | 2026-01-06 10:29:52 |
 | The Sea Change | Mark Greenwood The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for. — Leonard Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher: 1899 – 1951) I am afraid that my child is dying. Unexpectedly. Can it ever be that a child can die expectedly? How … | 2026-01-06 10:27:08 |
 | In the Shadows | Danielle Chammas About the Artist Danielle Chammas, MD is a palliative care physician and psychiatrist in the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Co-director of Patient and Caregiver Education at the UCSF MERI Center. In addition to providing clinical care, her interests include medical humanities, the intersection … | 2026-01-06 10:19:56 |
 | Mystery Diagnosis | Nathan Makarewicz About the Artist Makarewicz is a fourth-year medical student at Stanford University. Nathan completed degrees in visual arts, ecology, and evolutionary biology at Princeton University and a graduate public health degree at the University of Utah. He competed as a varsity athlete for both Princeton and Utah. Prior … | 2026-01-06 10:13:06 |
 | I Can Do Hard Things | Michael Liu | 2025-12-30 21:34:07 |
 | Corpus | Micah Silberstein Corpus is a series of vignettes that draw connections between the organs dissected in anatomy lab and the human experiences related to these organs in life — the thrills, the conflicts, the failures, the wounds. _______________________________________________________________________ Lungs The diaphragmatic surface (base) of the lung, when static, is semilunar … | 2025-12-28 00:12:08 |
 | Listen for the Silence | Meg Winslow Her wound isn’t suppurating, doesn’t demand your attention with foul-smelling pus. There is no need for sterile gauze pads, adhesive bandages or antibiotic ointments. It is stealthy, and during initial intake you’ll probably overlook it entirely. There is much to distract you. Her geriatric eyelids are red-rimmed, tear-stained. … | 2025-12-28 00:02:29 |
 | The Complete Guide for Parents of a Child With Type I Diabetes | James Tyner Chapter 1: There will be blood. It will seep from the edges of steel, it will flow out in steady pumps at blood tests, you will randomly find it on your hands, your fingers, when needle tips glide against you after giving injections, opening you up … | 2025-10-06 00:00:59 |
 | Don’t Touch My Back | Emily Nguyen And what do you say back to the Voices? ‘No one is touching My back,’ she recites. Good. You must talk back to Them and Tell yourself what’s Real. Her forehead glistening light pink, The spot she banged and banged against the Walls, then peeled away … | 2025-10-06 00:00:36 |
 | After | Audrey Shafer ˗ homage to Ada Limón’s Before Long legged and fifteen, I sit before my mother, a silhouette in white winter light before she says I have something to tell you about your father before she says he died before she fell silent and I, the quiet one, … | 2025-10-06 00:00:20 |
 | The Souls Of Black Girls | Lauryn “Soleaux” Jones “The piece explores the circumstances that create the invisible internal wounds caused by continuous race-based traumatic stress injury. It also describes the necessary processes that promote healing of those wounds.” Dear Black Woman, Take a deep breath. Close your eyes, relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw, let … | 2025-10-06 00:00:06 |
 | Shelf | Kamala Rodrigues It’s one of those fuzzy, blurry, earliest of memories. I must’ve been four. My big brother five. Don’t know the season, as it was just comfortably warm in the house as the sunbeams went horizontal and let the dust dance in their bellies. I was in his room. … | 2025-10-06 00:00:02 |
 | From the Editors | SPRING 2019 EDITION In 2008, six physicians at Stanford Medical Center formed a writers’ circle. They spanned specialties and training levels, and they met each month to share their work, first in private and then at public readings around campus. Because of their affiliation with Stanford’s Medicine and the Muse … | 2019-05-17 03:00:56 |
 | Meeting Moussa | Julia Huemer, M.D., Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist It is a cold morning. A bit of sunshine, but apart from that, there is this cold and very sharp Viennese wind that drives me crazy, getting into my body, reaching every bone, no matter how many sweaters I wear. I am tired, … | 2019-05-17 01:55:14 |
 | In Photographs | My older sister and I drive the two hours to Mom’s house in the woods. The familiar side road off the highway snakes deeper into the hills. I crank the wheel for the sharp left onto her steep gravel drive. Mom’s dream home. The carved wood sign out front reads, … | 2019-05-17 01:50:29 |
 | Crossing the Line | Excerpt from Blood of The Common Sky, Publisher: Astor and Lenox As the rain continued into December, I began volunteering at the Vietnamese civilian hospital, the USOM [U.S. Overseas Mission] in downtown Da Nang. I was afforded this respite from clinic and triage time because of the arrival of four … | 2019-05-17 01:45:01 |
 | Narration and Identity | There are some things in life which, once they’ve been invented, we can never do without. These include electricity, the mobile telephone, the Internet, and the serotonin receptor. Identity is no different. All of a sudden it existed and then everybody needed it. Historians attribute the birth of identity … | 2019-05-17 01:35:04 |
 | A Good Day | I suppose for most physicians, we write to process a tough interaction, a disheartening conversation, or a terrible day. In truth, I write daily. And most often, it’s to process someone else’s terrible day. That’s the job of a radiologist. To look at a patient’s CT scan or ultrasound or … | 2019-05-17 01:30:26 |
 | Vini Satin | The small examination room collapses around us in a shattering roar, so suddenly that the patient’s last words are forced from her mouth in a constricting scream. “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” Her cries to God changed to a few moans, then complete silence after shifting support beams and falling plaster … | 2019-05-17 01:10:22 |
 | Two Doctors | “He was a doctor, you know,” your wife said, when I introduced myself as your doctor. These words were still foreign then – the two syllables sharp and too intimate in the hospital room, above the tubes and twisting IV lines connecting your body, disconnected from me in my starchy … | 2019-05-17 01:00:19 |
 | At the State Psychiatric Hospital | Colors steer him To a murky sea Frigid Waves –enraged monsters– Breach over black rocks. Few rhymes left. Music gone. Voice smothered. Eyes stare Crystal like. “His name is David. . . Hopeless,” I’m told. | 2019-05-17 00:55:47 |
 | Intracranial | Carissa Anne Lee Five Stages Oil Pastel Oh, fickle memory, how it deceives! A sieve to the mundane, location of the car keys, wallet, the route he took to work each day. Erases the most crucial, too, the infant’s scent beneath her dark curls tumbling from a pink barrette, Mom’s … | 2019-05-17 00:50:08 |
 | Mentoring (For Dr. WCW) | Williams brought over A bag of plums, A tree of white blossoms, A locomotive, Ghost- images of Her thread-bare ankles I’ve loved his poems ! The pages of his ‘Collected Works’ all dog-eared now, Tear-stained, Or smiling I knew that woman , Sitting at the window A child on her … | 2019-05-17 00:45:38 |
 | Recommendation | Reject the reports, the scans, the needles, the hospital windows sealed against flight, and cold tile floors, clear fluid emptying into your chest, pills lined and ready on the counter. Go. Find Buddy Guy’s breaking strings and solos, pieces of Janice’s heart, bourbon and beer tabs. Go– meet at the … | 2019-05-17 00:40:10 |
 | Circle of Life | A poem inspired by a term on the renal transplant service. Envisioning kidney transplant from the perspective of the organ going through death into reincarnation. It arrives in a styrofoam box Hand-delivered sometimes Otherwise DHL ultra-express With chequered police tape skirting the scene and the cold purgatory of semi-death cased … | 2019-05-17 00:35:43 |
 | Under the Bridge | It’s just a choice of what we want to lose The moon hangs in the cold crisp air all night To wash me and my pain in gentle light My bro’s harp wraps my soul in smoky blues Without some nurse’s orders I sip booze And smoke fine weed and … | 2019-05-17 00:30:33 |
 | Three Hearts | Asheen Rama Three Hearts Oil Paint | 2019-05-17 00:15:29 |
 | Shoulder Joint | Asheen Rama Shoulder Joint Pen, Ink, Marker | 2019-05-17 00:10:17 |
