The Shape of a Woman: Two Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“I think about the woman / wilting // on the pillow of the steering wheel,” begins Stacy R. Nigliazzo’s poem “Sketch,” featured in this month’s Art of Nursing department. As the title suggests, the poem sketches out a scene, the immediate aftermath of a car accident. The driver appears dead; the paramedics “offer her up, prostrate / in white splints,” while the physician records the time. The narrator—who might be an ED nurse (perhaps Nigliazzo, an ED nurse herself)—describes what she sees. And as she does, we feel the terrible burden of her witnessing: the victim’s eyes brim “like black bowls that can’t be filled.” When the victim has been taken away, we’re left with almost nothing, only some coins and “buckled lines / in the shape of a woman.” It’s a short, spare piece that conjures up far more complicated matters, like where the dead reside, and how the living might go on.

The narrator of “Connection,” the poem by Camille Norvaisas that’s featured in January’s Art of Nursing, has undergone a double mastectomy. She is shockingly direct in her stated desire. “I want to feel the same / as my nipples, so cold, / in some jar in a sterile lab,” she tells us. She’s trying to comprehend a literal disconnection: once her breasts were part of her; now, “referred to as tissue,” they lie on a stainless […]

2016-11-21T13:14:06-05:00February 4th, 2011|nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Questions of Priority, Written in Vernix and Blood: Two Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Jenna Kay Rindo’s poem “An Ode to My Certified Nurse Midwife” (Art of Nursing, August) brims with the narrator’s gratitude for the clinician who has seen her through a “gloomy complicated gestation” with great skill and compassion. (Art of Nursing poems are always free online—just click through to the PDF files.)

This is no sentimental paean, though. This ode is a gritty read, full of vernix and “unrehearsed pain,” euphoria and shame. The child, we learn, was “conceived completely out of wedlock, / in a rush of holy illicit love.” The narrator at first only wants to know how long she can hide the pregnancy. It’s the nurse midwife whose “jubilant congratulations” never seem to waver, whose “size seven hands covered in  / sterile latex” draw the infant’s wide shoulders into the world, and give the young mother courage. It’s an ode, perhaps, to something we strive for but rarely attain: a nonjudgmental attitude.

“It is lucky to live outside the target groups,” begins the narrator of Erika Dreifus’s poem “The Autumn of H1N1” (Art of Nursing, October). She is referring to those considered most at risk for the flu and thus at the top of the list for immunization.

But when she finds herself hemorrhaging and frightened, waiting to be seen by a gynecologist who minimizes her distress, she reveals far more complicated feelings about “the prioritized.” It’s an unusually frank […]

2016-11-21T13:15:31-05:00October 1st, 2010|patient engagement|1 Comment
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On Difficult Truths, Anger, and Compassion: Recent Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“Why couldn’t you leave cleanly?” asks the narrator of Ann Sihler’s poem, “Leavings,” featured in the June Art of Nursing. The poem, written in response to a suicide, speaks to the emotions of those left behind. Its central image, a pair of “oxblood loafers lying there / for all to see,” is somehow both mundane and horrifying. It’s a stark poem, suffused with the narrator’s anger; yet its lack of pretension also affords us  relief.

The married man with “schoolboy cheeks” in Nancey Kinlin’s poem, “Practicing at Post Office Square,” has just heard what no one wants to hear: “the result / is positive.” The poem, featured in July’s Art of Nursing, gives us the disclosure—from the nurse’s point of view. It’s a poem about mistakes and compassion, about what it feels like to be the one delivering bad news. Kinlin’s spare, clear writing doesn’t flinch from its difficult subject.

Both poems are free online (you’ll need to click through to the PDF files). We invite you to have a look, sit with them, and tell us what they evoke for you in the comments.

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2016-11-21T13:16:20-05:00July 30th, 2010|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Fetal Pigs and Popcorn: ‘Lessons’ in May’s ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

To be frank, the opening scenario in Bernadette Geyer’s poem “Lessons,” featured in this month’s Art of Nursing department, made me uneasy when I first read it—and yet I was intrigued. In the poem, “Mom” has fallen asleep over a medical textbook, and her three daughters “watch as Dad / tosses popcorn, aimed for her slack mouth.” What’s going on here? The father’s action seems mocking, almost cruel.

But as good poems will, “Lessons” reveals more with each reading. The mother’s textbook is full of lurid photographs, including those of “a dissected fetal pig.” The young daughters find their own changing bodies “so embarrassing.” The father’s popcorn tossing makes his daughters giggle, and those garish photos of death recede just a little. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.  Read the poem—it’s free online (please click through to the PDF version)—and sit with it for a bit, see what you think. Then tell us in the comments!

Bernadette Geyer, a writer and freelance editor living in the Washington, DC, area,  received a 2010 Strauss Fellowship from the Arts Council of Fairfax County, Virginia.  Links to several of her poems can be found on her Web site.  She also blogs here about writing, motherhood, and life in “the exiles of suburbia.”

If you’re a poet or a visual artist, we hope you’ll consider submitting your work to us for consideration. Read this blog […]

2016-11-21T13:17:42-05:00May 14th, 2010|Nursing|3 Comments
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‘After Heart Surgery’: A Survivor’s Account in March’s ‘Art of Nursing’

by Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“I am grateful for the two hours my heart / stopped,”  says the narrator of  “After Heart Surgery.” It’s an incredible, heart-stopping line.  The voice is that of someone who has literally returned from the dead. He tells the tale with lively wonder, pledging  “allegiance to each leaflet of my bicuspid valve.” And yet as he lies in the bed, “eyes open,” attending carefully to his own heartbeat, we sense his lingering fear, too.

Poet Richard Waring doesn’t flinch from difficult subjects and offers them to us with rare clarity. In an earlier poem, “Oboe,” Waring wrote of a boy’s time on a locked ward and how music helped him find “the grammar of a new survival.” (For either poem, click on the link and then open the PDF.) Waring is also a senior layout artist at the New England Journal of Medicine; his poems have appeared in venues as varied as Chest and The Boston Globe. We’re honored to have his work in our pages.

If you’re a poet or a visual artist, we hope you’ll consider submitting to Art of Nursing. Read this blog post for details. Guidelines can be found here. Still have questions? Write to the Art of Nursing coordinator (me) at sylvia.foley@wolterskluwer.com.

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2016-11-21T13:18:35-05:00March 26th, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
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