Title: Metamorphosis/Sixteen

RANDI RUBENZIK, MD, is a dermatologist in Phoenix with interests in art, literature, medicine, parenting, and curiosity in general.

A new species has been identified; legs now wings some spots, Rejecting the crawling phase and its pleasures, wholeheartedly receiving flying, Like a wave that flowed out and then flowed in again. Different water.

Was it a flight from or only a flight to? Departure or only arrival?

Was there any memory of before?

Was there any twitch of blessing? Was there enough time, armature, struts, was the clay properly sourced and dried, Will the first fibers hold during the bursting out of its cracked, blind egg?

This is a different Thing with new angles, textures, smells, desires, destinations.

You are near and you will go far, but I think the sculptor's pressed thumbprints will remind you

Of the elemental dirt itself, shifting its heavy mulch, promising ascent.

Title: whole

Knowing the body is central to caring for patients. We are taught to identify pathology by comparing to a baseline – “normal” anatomy, “normal” physiology, “normal” movement. But what, really, is a “normal” body? This piece interrogates not bodies per-say, but rather corporeality. It challenges the viewer to see not only what is missing, but to see the way in which absence makes space for wholeness. This is dedicated to my queer and trans family.

Phoenix.