FRONT/LINES
Nurse Poets & Pandemic Perspectives
FRONT/LINES Nurse Poets & Pandemic Perspectives
As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts the lives of people around the globe, the miraculous work of healthcare professionals has come sharply into focus. Every day we witness extraordinary acts of courage. NNER editors stand in strong solidarity with nurses, doctors, technicians, hospital staff, EMTs, ambulance drivers, and other front-line workers who are providing essential services during this crisis. With our Front/Lines ebook, we hope to lift the voices of nurses and healthcare workers while spotlighting their stories, concerns, and lyrical wisdom. We’re also sharing poems about nursing and caretaking—explorations of recovery, rhythms of the body, time, balms, and the danger and magic of touch. There is a rich tradition of “lit med”—healthcare-centered poetry, prose, and creative nonfiction—and NNER is committed to showcasing this important art. —Margot Douaihy & Michaela Kowalski, Northern New England Review
Northern New England Review
E D I TO R Margot Douaihy
ASS I STA N T E D I TO R Michaela Kowalski
A DVI SO RS Donna Decker Sarah Dangelantonio Alan Schulte
FO UN D I N G E D I TO R William “Ritchie” Darling
CO N T E N TS
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LO R C Á N B L AC K HAZ M AT NA N CY M OS H E R SO M E T I M ES I W I S H I W E R E A YOUN G NUR S E AGA I N
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MIC H A E L A RT H U R CAV ES MAS KS, O L D A N D N EW
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E IL E EN VO R BAC H CO L L I N S O DE TO T H E RES PI RATO RY T H ERAPIST
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AM Y WA L K ER T HE W R I T I N G O N T H E G L ASS
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AN T H O N Y C H EST ER F I E L D N 95
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AS H A N T I F I L ES MA RT Y R
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J E N EV I EV E CA R LY N H U G H ES R E D R I B BO N S
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J E FF R EY H AS K EY-VA L ER I U S ST RA D D L I N G T H E B R I N K
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GE R B U R G GA R M A N N COV I D -1 9 O R O N CULT I VAT I N G A S HA R PN ESS F RO M T H E BACKS OF ROC KS J ESS I CA S L I N K M A N FOR T H E CH I L D CA L L E D LOV E, AN D FOR T H OS E W H O A LWAYS L I STEN JAM ES WYS H Y N S K I NIG H TS, DAYS SARA H M A R Q U EZ W HEN N EW YO RK’S H A RT I S LAN D IS R ES E RV E D FO R UN CL A I M E D BOD IES C L A R I SSA C ERVA N T ES WAS H
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AL A N S. B R I D G ES COV I D -1 9 TA N K A
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K AT H E R I N E L EO N A R D RO O M F UL L O F V I RUS
In C l osi ng
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CO N T R I B U TO R N OT ES
Lorcán Black
HAZMAT The lungs of this city are burning. Outside an ambulance expels three medics: minutes later they move a man between them like a chess piece. From our terrace I can see the thin, frail rage of his chest rising and falling with each step. I can see the fever glowing—radiation hot— his chest heaving. A woman stands by the door, crying. The suits help him tenderly, three beekeepers carefully arranging the contagious fever of a whole hot hive to be hand delivered, finally, into a white sterility. Each night since I have stared at that house. What if they ban funerals? Then what will she do, but sit memorizing every last detail of those men, eyes under white hoods, escorting him off into darkness? The sirens are silent. Their lights disappear in blackness,
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BLACK
into a night on fire with distance. The spring trees are restless— Listen—their branches are breathing and creaking. Tonight, and every night, I can’t help but think what walls of what houses– how many thousands– passing mere time, caging such grief?
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Nancy Mosher
SOMETIMES I WISH I WERE A YOUNG NURSE AGAIN Sometimes I wish I were a young nurse again. Crisp in my white dress. (Pants were edgy then.) The starched white cap with black stripe, pinned precariously to my unruly hair. White shoes. Why white? To proudly display the Stains of an evening on 3 West? A palette. I was an empty cistern Knowing nothing. Scared even to enter a patient’s room, I would drive home over the dark mountain near midnight, Incandescent. A laboring woman vomiting bright cherries across the room onto a white wall. The rasp of Cheynes-Stokes. The forgiveness—or lack—that flooded the rooms of the dying. I had the key to the psych rooms. I sat on the bed and listened carefully, respectfully. Student of delusions. I broke hospital rules. Sneaking a raw egg to dying Cyril every night, Plopped in a forbidden glass of sherry and down with one swallow.
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NANCY MOSHER
I charted that I force-fed a woman Who wanted to die through her feeding tube, But I hadn’t, arrested by her blazing eyes. Nurses had no rights. For a pittance we ran the hospital, Defined the culture, Alchemized our personal brand of tough and soft, Enduring the arrogant ire of male doctors. My grey-haired head nurse Althea Was stout and fierce. I wanted to name my daughter after her. Phyllis and I would wash and wrap the dead, plug orifices, A ring on the toe to avoid confusion. Hefted, shrouded, on a gurney Waiting til the coast was clear. Rushing to the service elevator. Alas sometimes we’d laugh as we descended, gasping, into Hades. The cold drawer rolling closed. Phyllis, the aide, was 27, older than me, with dentures. She had street smarts. I had a BA in English. I was clumsy for a nurse, bumping into things, Spilling, misplacing, forgetting IVs. Drawn to difficult patients. They put me in charge after six months. F R O N T/ L I N E S
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Michael Arthur Caves
MASKS, OLD AND NEW They need me. The nurse ran from the hallway as my wife bled out Her face turned white Even as she squeezed my hand, white knuckled Alarms chirped and sang over a mechanized buzzing I told her we would get through this Even as I contemplated trying to raise three kids without her Even as they rushed our third child to the pediatric intensive care unit For months we lived in the hospital Watched our baby girl under blue lights, with tubes down her throat Even as our two boys stayed home, waiting to meet their sister Our four-year-old said a prayer for Ellie Nurses rotated through our glass room, behind masks Some offered hope Even as she stopped breathing Even as the baby next door lost her pulse They need me. Our boys clung to me When I arrived in the middle of the night Mom still miles away, watching our baby girl in a plexiglass box Even as she tried to recover from giving birth A few hours until I returned Feeling guilty about having a hot shower, guilty about being away from Ellie Guilty about leaving my boys
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M I C H A E L A R T H U R C AV E S
Two years later, Ellie is thriving Mom is working overnight in the Emergency Department Where I almost lost my two girls Between the fights over food and bedtime Broken dishes and color crayon murals on the wall I can’t imagine doing this alone Even as mom is gone most nights Even as she falls asleep midsentence They need me. She looks up from her phone, during her only day off Don’t we count? Don’t we need you? I think. After five nights in a row, caring for patients suffering from a new kind of virus I told her we would get through this She disappears into the nights As I contemplate trying to raise three kids without her We need you.
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Eileen Vorbach Collins
ODE TO THE RESPIRATORY THERAPIST We used to laugh, my friend You with your machines that are still A mystery no matter how many times You explain They get in my way and the bells and whistles alarm me The sounds when you suction, going deep Cause me to look away, feel weak We used to laugh Me with an aversion to secretions You who could not take the smell of feces Neither of us are laughing now And you are all heroes
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EILEEN VORBACH COLLINS
Amy Walker
THE WRITING ON THE GLASS Dry erase yellow & orange remind her of sun, chalk images, blacktop games, sidewalk hopscotch, tag, you’re-it, notes passed behind the teacher’s back, honey moons, languid days, love sonnets. Somnolent, she is. The universe, tired too, of whispering slow down, listen, stop… so now it shouts. Sheets clean, blanket tucked, each breath a raft on which to drift. A sound wakes her, drags her out from under, this inhale, exhale, whistle, rattle. Every limb aches. A siren wails, chest on fire, salt, passion & ash, this life was beatific. Bedside visits less & less, more & more infections, the separation & the death. Polaroid-like visions, through window glass, eyes as human hands, dark & wrinkled, this connection. Still they come, shrouded, faceless angels, N95 masks. They leave her notes, sketches on the window, voices color-coded, poetry & nonsense, erasable. A nurse draws stick figures in red, circles & lines dance together, the doctor adds a scribble, relevant, imperfect, meaningful. Running back & forth, indefatigable, rush of light, whirling dust, indelible marks.
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Anthony Chesterfield
N95 I bought you on the black market, from a CNA, behind the nurse’s station. I can’t blame them for charging me five dollars. They, along with the doctors, are on the front lines of humanity. As a social worker, I’ve never had the humility of touching a wound, or examining humors. Not directly. The governor says there’s not enough of you, for us first responders. But to whom should I respond? To common civility? Upon which I have honed my tongue for the past ten years in social-work school. To the fear-mongering media? Which is not allowed in here. To press the flesh—to shake hands—with a death that pends for all. But when? You are asphyxiating—closing the door to my face. Leaving only the windows of my essence ajar to offer counsel to my patients. My job description remains the same. I’m a hustler of jargon, Perseus’s reflective shield, a soother of patients—their Psyches—How I don’t want them in union with God too soon. Yesterday, the administration decreed that I’m not to enter the rooms of the infected. Who is the leper? The patient or me? White coat syndrome might be more real now—for them. COVID-19’s proteins unpin order. The helix of their DNA unthreads social fabrics that ostensibly protect me from the virus. Where am I safe? When? In this N95 masquerade from 9 to 5? When I clock out, on a pleasant spring day? When I walk outside, all move six feet over—except the pigeons. Walking, bobbing their heads. Strutting, mocking me. As if they remember those quacks of the 17th century wearing their manner on their faces, packing masks with incense that stinks so intensely it almost poisons the air.
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ANTHONY CHESTERFIELD
I hide my I.D. which allowed me to Danse Macabre without threats of a fine for another day. I amble past a liquor store, another “essential” business. But, let’s be charitable, they are giving free rounds to us healthcare personnel dealing with this new Vita Nova. I’ll still pay the mortgage for my house on time. A dead pledge to the fate I tempt daily. The president wants America open by the end of the month. Maybe he can fill Tetzel’s coffers single-handedly for the living, but does he care about the dead in the hospital morgues? I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I tear you off my face and throw you in the wash. I’ll don Luther’s Ninety-Five Thesis again tomorrow when I return to work at the nursing home.
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Ashanti Files
MARTYR I don’t want to be a martyr But I see you calling for my help Confusion beyond words As I try not to gasp at the confusion Cry at our government in rage Attempt to stay positive on my Facebook page Because I cannot be a martyr Although I was trained to be your saving grace I’ve held hands with the dying Looked their families in the face When I say that they’re gone Assure them you didn’t suffer I dare not be your martyr My youngest would barely utter Memories of us if the worst were to pass I’m home praying for help But my faith won’t last Because I know I can help you I know I can give you four weeks I know I’m being arrogant But in my arrogance at least I want to help Powerless is one thing most nurses say they felt But there are simply no words for this I’m in my small town living life in bliss While my counterpart is comforting the dying Risking her life daily trying Because she don’t give a damn about being a martyr This guilty privilege I choose to bear Sending prayers out to those who will stare
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ASHANTI FILES
At the face of a stranger as they take their last breath I’m not a martyr Therefore I guess I will just sit here and wonder What I COULD have done
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Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes
RED RIBBONS They are tying red ribbons on the trees now for the first responders, and the emergency workers, for the caregivers, the doctors and nurses, for all the healthcare providers wearing their masks and their bravery into the fray. So, I tied a ribbon to the nearest tree to honor those serving on the front lines, but the ribbon wouldn’t reach all the way around the trunk like I wanted, like a hug. Instead, I tied the ribbon around a branch, one that looked like it was reaching out to help or to comfort, maybe a neighboring tree, but there weren’t any other trees nearby. Even at a distance, this tree could be connecting deeply through its roots, together though apart as we write to long-lost friends, sew makeshift masks for neighbors, inquire whether we can donate blood, while gathering up our ribbons or perhaps some yarn, braided & homespun, to tether to the nearest tree or fencepost or latch, wondering even whether our shoelaces would suffice for showing solidarity as we do our small part by staying home. And this tree will wear its ribbon as a signal of aid like the armbands that medics once wore during past pandemics and world wars, because the flowers are struggling to bloom beside the field hospitals this spring, and the frontlines feel like wartime,
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J E N E V I E V E C A R LY N H U G H E S
and for us all, it is a time for love and grief and heartache, and reaching out and digging deep.
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Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius
STRADDLING THE BRINK 0809 :: There was no time for apologies before I had to break your ankles, to jam your sex with steel to halt the ebbing tide. The swollen grapefruits howled their crimson tune till Sunday morning. And the sterile hallway shook as it rocked on, on, on. 1431 :: Her lungs gave one final push and ceased. After daughters came to sing, I washed behind her rubber ears, tied a tag around her toe, swaddled those lead limbs in black tarp. The transporter came with the metal slab, not as frigid as his jokes: what if she wakes up! 1627 :: When you get a patient who’s a physician, suddenly it’s their spouse who is the nurse, entitled to spoil, entitled to know it all. But because she was white, I’d mistaken her for anyone other than his wife. It was when she kissed him that I loathed her: for reminding me of my prejudice. 1050 :: A rotting liver meant the blood stopped clotting, would crash around inside her like the freakish Atlantic. I spent hours slamming bag after bag of plasma into her veins, and when it didn’t matter anymore, right away they rang the Hospice gods. 1522 :: As one man’s family begged me to end his agony, another’s hollow throat kept screaming NURSE! from down the hall. The charge nurse then decided I would need a new admission, I guess to replace the woman who’d just died. I looked to management for hope or a word on how to approach, and instead, they handed me a plate of sauerkraut, wished me luck in the new year. They didn’t care what I did, so long as I thanked them for the opportunity.
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J E F F R E Y H A S K E Y - VA L E R I U S
1138 :: The dead woman: those metallic cables were still glued to her flattened chest, so her heart monitor kept alarming outside. As I prayed in solace with her daughter, kissing the chilly forehead, a stranger came to yank the cords. (I’m so sorry.) In a flash, the room grew colder than the body. 1900 :: A detonation. The other nurses scattered, ducked. I, quietly, just smiled; the pink mist wasn’t any worse than this 12-hour shift. As each of my bones exploded inside me, they pooled into my legs, leaving me a gelatinous, walking non-solid. Months later, I couldn’t recall their names, only my own cracked ribs, faceless badge, trembling hands.
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Gerburg Garmann
COVID-19 OR ON CULTIVATING A SHARPNESS FROM THE BACKS OF ROCKS It is hard work to cultivate a sharpness from the backs of rocks that bear hesitant check marks. They are not ragged enough for our chisels. Not graspable enough for our hands. Neither can we obtain it from the curves of question marks. Too many of them are unwilling to give up the even bends of their skin. Most recently, as time passes differently than normal, we ask ourselves questions we usually would not. Why do we envy the snow its talent of falling so silently? And this broom‌ How young is it? Does it only know how to sweep feathers? Would clothing it in a jackal’s coat sharpen its instincts? Yet our minds strike tin. Just tin! (For now, exclamation marks rule!) Whoever forged the first hammer and anvil Also invented tears for the sole reason of seeing through them. The sunniness of an onion included. When its acrimonious scent does little but rile us we surely are better off sweeping all fallen feathers back onto the backs of rocks with young brooms.
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GERBURG GARMANN
With their white wings they will compel the masked blossoms to remain on the magnolia trees a bit longer and, should the torrents hold off, propel us into their cathedral of branches where we start to understand, ever so slowly, the intentions of shadow, and the fact that stars become mother’s milk turning every check mark, every question and every exclamation, into the softness of wind. There, no one needs to wear the jackal’s coat of itchy heroism. Soon, really soon, we will untangle ourselves from invisible lethal currents and will work again with butter and clay in the absence of silence. We will wake up and ask different questions in history’s new crowded spaces where we’ll caress apples and mangos that have been touched before.
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Jessica Slinkman
FOR THE CHILD CALLED LOVE, AND FOR THOSE WHO ALWAYS LISTEN I always joke about how if I ever get pulled over on my way home from work, my colorful nursing scrubs would scream “I care for sick children,” scratching out any wrongdoing today I cannot joke Officer I realize I was going 55 in a 40 but I was just following the speed of my brain’s traffic and after all, my thoughts were going 60 you see, today on my unit, a child came a foot and a half from death and will most likely inch to his final destination by morning and we cannot stop him there’s a horrible thing about this kind of helpless where your hands are trapped but your head is free to wander where your body is gridlocked but there is nothing but miles of open highway for your brain and no matter how far it goes, it still gets you nowhere and no matter how little you’ve moved it still hurts and I feel like rock-n-rolled over by a truck sling shot back into your now cracked windshield sorry my pain was never meant to shatter you too but when i open my teeth mouth misfortunes spit gravel bits of the misery I’ve seen here I end up hurting you as you’re driving by minding your own business mind filled with happiness until my broken pieces break in, rain down
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JESSICA SLINKMAN
I don’t think clouds try to ruin our days on purpose don’t block the sun out of spite or spit water droplets out of disrespect for our parades & pool parties & wedding days I think they just build up so much inside that they have to cry out loud once in a while so thank you for weathering the storm for a time we are so much lighter now
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James Wyshynski
NIGHTS, DAYS Night 3: Before the minute hand clasps the hour and she darkens my doorway with her clipboard—a sprig of lilac blossoming from her wrist—and a bouquet of questions, let me beggar my life down to its bedrock [a hawk hitched to a thermal corkscrews heavenward], and rat out how I’ve failed. I’ll name nouns, betray what I’ve betrayed—faces, hands not held, words used as splinters—let me warble like a canary [a grouse startles out of grass] drunk on a spiked and sugared IV. Before she darkens my doorway with her teal scrubs and hazel eyes [sunflower stitched in her hair], let me repent—at its bedrock: to go beyond one’s mind—let me hold this new head in these old hands, let me take this throbbing [the whirr of a pheasant’s wings rising from a copse] and use the hurt of it as a litmus strip to test a lifetime of misplaced devotion [a crow pecking a squirrel’s remains on a dark highway]. Before I appear before her, before Rhonda [lily abloom on her shoulder] looks into my eyes, checks my vitals, before she presses her stethoscope to my heart, I’ll re-stitch it all [a vee of geese banks, tipping their wings into the turn].
Emory Neurology ICU, Post Aneurism
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JA M ES WYS H Y N S K I
Day 4: Before my nurse asks, I recite my name, my birth. I raise my hands. I wiggle my toes and lift my legs and wait for her to ask me to press them against her. What good does it do to show off? Rhonda interrupts— news of my mother. Sunrise Home had called. She’s been at it again. In my ear: Get the hell out of my house, you shit.
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Night 4: What They Ask, What I Hear What’s your name? What day is it? When were you born? Raise your arms, lift your feet and press them against my hands. * Mark the day. When did you come to be? Lift your head, raise your voice and press your name to my ear. Tell me who you are.
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JA M ES WYS H Y N S K I
Day 9: Making the Rounds My Beatrice is named Rhonda, and she’s been with me since the start—softball star, umpire of my fear, charged with fielding my care. She puts down her coffee: You need to get out of bed. As we make a slow circuit of the wing’s roundabout, rooms come into view. Here, a son leans forward in a chair, elbows on his father’s bed as if kneeling before the tangle of wires and tubes that once knew his name. Here, a body hangs horizontal from the ceiling, a one-man capsule trapped in hurt’s gravity. Rhonda’s arm, tucked into the crook of my elbow, tugs at me: Which way this time? Nurses interrupt their work to track us from their stations. We’re a caesura in the day’s rhythm. Two slow motion comets. I steady myself against Rhonda. She tells me how she got around the rules and took a patient outside so he could make his peace with sky and squint in sun. We go around again. I learn how she met her love, Laure, who is waiting for her at home at the end the shift. Monitors beep and chirp. An Exit sign glows.
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Sarah Marquez
WHEN NEW YORK’S HART ISLAND IS RESERVED FOR UNCLAIMED BODIES The woman wears isolation better than the scrubs we picked out for her. When she started drinking tea instead of coffee, because she couldn’t handle the caffeine, we drew a circle ’round her feet. Built a room of prayer to speak into. To keep the invisible hand from digging a new grave for her body. The word hero means nothing to her ears, cut off from every sound but sirens. The mechanical voice announcing code blue, code blue. The house is not safe when she is out, goes missing for a walk, or returns, after caring for COVID patients. We disinfect each room, every door handle, the air. But the woman’s weary sighs nucleate faster than we can clean. Before bed, one night, we ask for a story where she saved a life, gave a family back its dignity. The couch is hugging the woman as though it knows how hard she’s been at it. Running back and forth between open units, concealing bruises beneath an N95 mask. She tells us that a pregnant lady came in and gave birth to a dead baby. She tested positive for the virus but is on a vent and looks like she will make it. We cannot comprehend what she is learning too quickly: the peak is coming and we must be ready to carry the cross of a divided country on our backs, claim this outcome again.
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SARAH MARQUEZ
Clarissa Cervantes
WASH Wash as if you just chopped up a jalapeno pepper you might now have to put in your contact lenses to see the invisible enemy perhaps better a microscopic laboratory lens would be. Wash as if you went to the beach you might now have to rinse and rinse that salty water Where indeed is my Safe Harbor will come to be? Wash as if you just came out of the mud you might now have to clean each and every finger, the back of hands, the creases and nail beds, and the back of nails. Wash as if you could wash away all your freighting feelings you might now have to surrender all your fears and tears having the hope for a bright future in the next years.
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Alan Bridges
COVID-19 TANKA
pandemic yet still the song of a northern cardinal two notes followed by six
migrating pelicans pile onto an Indiana pond . . . the way a virus propagates
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ALAN BRIDGES
strangers sidestep on the yellow dot trail a wood thrush sings two notes simultaneously
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Katherine Leonard
A ROOM FULL OF VIRUS an emergency room prayer
And here we are. You and me and dozens and dozens of other people. I usually don’t meet people like you like this. But now, I approach your face with my instrument in hand I look deeply into your eyes closing with each sucking breath look deeply into your mouth gaping, gasping Classifying your airway as it closes on itself, hoping oh I am so hoping when my instrument meets your airway, it slides without resistance.
A room full of virus and you full of virus. I want to push fresh air into your clouds of lungs and shriek Please please please Oh Please.
But I am a professional and can’t afford to have tears fog my glasses. I don’t want to be the last person you see—me in my gown, my mask, my shielded face—tube in gloved hand reaching for you—your throat.
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K AT H E R I N E L E O N A R D
I want you to see the sun and the stars. I want you to walk by a river during full moon and look into a face you love—naked, plain, just there—with open hands just for you. Please please Oh Please don’t let me be the last sight in all your life.
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CONTRIBUTOR NOTES LORCÁN BLACK’s work has been published in The Los Angeles Review and The Stinging Fly & Assaracus, among others. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee & was longlisted for the Two Sylvias Prize. His first collection, Rituals, was published in 2019. ALAN S. BRIDGES works as a Patient Services Representative at Emerson Hospital on the banks of the Sudbury River outside Boston, Massachusetts. Since 2008, he has been writing haiku, senryu and tanka, gaining inspiration from his natural surroundings. Alan has won multiple awards and was twice voted poet-of-the-year by readers of The Heron’s Nest. MICHAEL ARTHUR CAVES works as a district attorney and professor. He has authored five books. His poems deal with loss, grief, poverty, nature, and rebirth. Michael hopes to make a home for poetry in every academic and professional discipline. CLARISSA CERVANTES obtained her Physical Therapy bachelor’s degree in 2000. Mrs. Cervantes has extensive experience in health care and mental health research as well as data entry and data management. She works closely with nurses and doctors for the best patient outcome. ANTHONY CHESTERFIELD is a social worker who specializes in end-of-life care. Each of his patients and their families have individually taught him about the unknown as he continues his vocation. He is pursuing an MFA at Manhattanville College.
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CONTRIBUTORS
EILEEN VORBACH COLLINS is a Baltimore native with a degree in nursing from the University of Maryland and a masters in pastoral care from Loyola College. ASHANTI FILES is a Registered Nurse from Central Illinois. She has been writing and performing poetry since grade school. Her first book, Woven: Perspectives of a Black Woman, was published last year. GERBURG GARMANN, a native of Germany, is a professor of German and French at the University of Indianapolis. Her scholarly publications appear in French, English, and German in international journals. Her poetry and paintings have appeared in various magazines and anthologies around the world. JENEVIEVE CARLYN HUGHES lives in New England and teaches history & humanities for college students. Previously, she trained as a nursing assistant through the American Red Cross in New Haven, CT. Her poetry has appeared in Braided Way Magazine and the Connecticut River Review. KATHERINE LEONARD grew up as a post-WWII Navy brat. She continued the pursuit of diverse careers as a chemist, a geologist, and retired as an oncology nurse practitioner at SUNY Upstate in Syracuse, NY.
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CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
(CONT.)
SARAH MARQUEZ is an MA candidate at National University. She is based in Los Angeles and has work published and forthcoming in various magazines and journals, including Human/Kind, Kissing Dynamite, Sandy River Review and Twist in Time Magazine. NANCY MOSHER’s nursing career started with hospital nursing in the mid 1970s and ultimately turned into decades of nurse practitioning in a women’s health care setting. She has served as a health care executive, representing the needs of patients she came to know so well. She is now a writer, leadership consultant, and a Reiki practitioner and teacher. JESSICA SLINKMAN is an emerging writer living in Chicago. She has been a pediatric nurse for two years, packed with learning not only about medical care, but about compassion and connection with others. JEFFREY HASKEY-VALERIUS is a writer and nurse new to Southern California with his husband and dog. His work has appeared in The Dreaded Biscuits and Sixfold. He holds a BA in fiction from Columbia College Chicago and is presently querying agents for representation of his first novel.
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CONTRIBUTORS
AMY WALKER is a multi-genre writer and international development practitioner. She owes much to the generous souls at Massachusetts General Hospital and thinks of them in these unprecedented times. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and chocolate Labrador. JAMES WYSHYNSKI is a former editor of the Black Warrior Review. His poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, River Styx, Stoneboat, Interim, Nimrod, The Cortland Review, Barrow Street, The Cincinnati Review, and are forthcoming in the Poetry South, Vallum, and others.
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