Human Voices Wake Us

Jerald Winakur

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781606353349
• eBook ISBN: 9781631012907
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Poesie

Patients and physicians are adrift in this era of rapidly changing medical paradigms. Perhaps it has always been so, though it seems that lately the dissatisfaction on both sides has intensified.

Doctors today are struggling: debt, divorce, substance abuse, burnout, suicide. They succeed or fail on professional treadmills; patient encounters measured out with coffee spoons. The doctor patient relationship is crumbling. Bureaucratic and corporate masters make their never-ending arguments of insidious intent. The overwhelming questions: Now where to turn? How do physicians— and their patients—avoid being crushed by the demands of science, of perfection, of expectations? How do we recover the awe we once felt in this world in which we expend our life force every day? How can we find joy once more?

Human Voices Wake Us is a plea, a prayer, a path for caregivers and patients, for all of us who struggle in difficult circumstances for understanding, enlightenment, and healing. This book is a treatise on the importance of self-reflection, attentiveness to our own inner voice and needs, as well as to those who are struggling with illness, age, infirmity, and loss. It is a call to nurture our idealism: that solid foundation grounding empathic responsiveness and our own humanity.

On Slipping Through Terminal 1,
Concourse C at O’Hare

First you descend, not all the way

but enough so jumbo jets can roll

across the tarmac caressing your hair while

music drifts—every song you

ever loved and then you are struck

by the lights, waves of neon rainbow rippling

racing overhead, drawing you onto

the moving path that carries you on more

quickly than you want to

go, pulling you through the dark tunnel

as the planes whine and rumble, readying

to spirit you away, tear you away

then far away at first her voice echoes

now clearly more clearly the siren calls:

please look down she whispers the moving

sidewalk ends she says please look down she sings

and you know what that means but you’re gliding

way too fast yet still grounded and you gaze

up into the lilting luminescence

unconcerned about the fall.

The Teens
For Christ Convention
At the Holiday Inn

There were legions

of them.

There was just

the two of us.

They squeezed

their fervent bodies

into the elevators.

Our aging bones

rose up alone.

They frolicked

in the hall

stormed the Coke machine.

We closed the door

latched it

sipped wine

from plastic cups.

Revivaling

they whooped

they hollered

flush with body

and blood.

The spirit moved us.

They stayed awake

all hours

prayed for flesh

and absolution

left forlorn.

We made

hallowed sounds

left reborn.

Flu Season

It’s nothing, you tell winter hordes

who break down the door

flooding the waiting room

with mucus, calling at all hours

it’s nothing it’s going to be

fine in a few days; go to bed

drink, take Tylenol by the clock

and you’ll be fine in a few days

they listen, they trust

and you believe ’til after

the fiftieth, or maybe

the five hundredth case

The Crash—

the worst headache: maybe an

aneurysm leaking

The Chill—

virions rupturing

re-infecting, spilling

into blood, temperature spiking

like a patient in sepsis

like one with that virus

no one can cure

The Cough—

incessant, wracking

subduing, old man’s friend

if only sleep would come

just go to sleep

but trachea on fire

bronchial tree burning

in spasms, animal feeding

on heart—maybe it’s not

what you think—viral-ravaged

neurons conjuring every

disease you ever learned

ever dreaded

fever breaks, cleansing sweat

body still resolvable

slowly overcomes, antibodies

rescue this time

but you are not immune.

The Whistler

They come every four months

He smiles, drools, sits quietly

always says yes, only says yes

at her turn she bitches and sighs

bemoans and cries: he’s getting worse

he’s only getting worse

She can’t take it anymore

and neither can I.

Have you considered a Home? I ask

my stethoscope on her chest

trying to discern

what’s inside, looking into her

mascara-caked eyes now

red and ruined beyond relief

when she shyly says, Doctor

I’ve gotten so fat but do you know

he still whistles when

I take off my clothes

And he sits there smiling

smiling, grinning, nodding

Yes, he says. Yes.

What We Said

He said he was losing weight because his appetite was off, the stress and all that, but otherwise felt fine except for the heartburn that he’d always had, more or less, but she finally made him come in.

And I said how long have your eyes been this color and he shrugged and she said it’s just the fluorescent lights and I said to him I think you should go into the hospital for some tests and he looked at me with those jaundiced eyes and asked: just for some tests? And I said yes.

There’s a growth I said a day later as he lay in his yellowness on the starched white sheets. A growth he asked? That doesn’t mean anything bad necessarily she said. Right, doctor? She looked at me her eyes brimming. I mean it could be a cyst, right? Just something filled with fluid? It could be, I said to him who didn’t look back. A cyst she said.

The surgeon called me after the case and said what a mess it was in there but he thinks he got it all. You got it all? I asked. I think so he told me. But I’d have the oncologist see him anyway he said.

The surgeon thinks he got it all I said to the patient who was leaking out through his tubes. Thank God she said. Oh thank you doctor she said. We need to have an oncologist see him just in case I said.

In case? she said. Yes I said. As long as there’s no chemotherapy she said. He doesn’t want chemotherapy. I understand I said.

He was sitting up, the tubes were crawli...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• First Do No Harm
• The Emu in the Graveyard
• Vigil, 1958
• Forest Hills Park, Spring 1994
• Pawn Shop Dreams
• Are Butterflies Birds?
• Taos, 4 July, 2100 Hours
• A Denunciation of Quarks
• Blown Pupil
• There
• The Breast Exam
• Low Water Crossing
• This Sadness
• To the Medical Student Who Jumped From the Roof of the Hospital
• Happiness Is Genetic Too
• Out of Practice
• Non-Stop Flight
• Gardeners
• Common Texas Grasses—A Guide
• Shock and Awe in Comfort, Texas
• What I Remember of Embryology
• B-Ball Lament
• What Mick’s Got
• On Slipping Through Terminal 1, Concourse C at O’Hare
• The Teens For Christ Convention At the Holiday Inn
• Flu Season
• The Whistler
• What We Said
• Triage
• Letting It Go
• A Sigh on Rounds
• Discharges
• Sherbet
• Clinic
• Side Show
• Hometown Girl
• Raising Money for Medical Bills
• The Tyranny of Aging
• Redbud
• Blue Period
• Moon Over Twin Sisters Peak
• Dragonfly
• Mowing
• Red Oak
• Free Range
• Feeding the Fish
• Plastic Caskets
• Goshawk
• Perseids
• Dark Side
• A Paper Anniversary at 52
• Blue Norther
• The Day It Came In
• Overwinter
• Auscultation
• Acknowledgments and Permissions