Medicine
Veneta Masson is a registered nurse and poet living in Washington, DC. She has written three books of essays and poems, drawing on her experiences over twenty years as a family nurse practitioner and director of an inner-city clinic. Information about her poetry collection Clinician's Guide to the Soul is available at sagefemmepress.com. The following poem from that collection was originally published online in Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine.
**
CURE
In Latin it means care,
conjures priests and temples
the laying on of hands
sacred pilgrimage
sacrifice
the sickbed
invalid and
solemn attendants.
How far we have come.
Today's English
has neatly expunged
those purely human elements.
Cure is impersonal, consequential
unequivocal, sometimes violent -
the annihilation
of the thing that ails.
This nurse
approaching the patient
has discarded temple garb
for practical scrubs.
His gloved hands
unsheathe the magic bullet,
shoot it through the central line
where it locks onto the target cells.
For the not-yet-cured,
there is still sacred pilgrimage -
that dogged slog
to the high tech shrine,
the health food store,
the finish line of the annual race
where, etched on each undaunted face,
is a gritty tale of survival.
- Veneta Masson
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Eric Cheng is a primary care physician for the VA, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA, a devoted husband and father, and an occasional poet. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he draws inspiration from his patients' incredible...
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A nurse practitioner and writer living in Washington, DC, Veneta Masson contributed a guest post to Common Sense Family Doctor earlier this year. This month, she published a thought-provoking piece in the journal Health Affairs, titled "Why I Don't...
- Guest Blog: Writing Poems On Antidepressants
Nikki Moustaki is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught at New York University, Indiana University, and the New School. The following poem was first...
- Favorite Guest Blogs
This post links to a selection of moving poetry and short fiction pieces previously featured on Common Sense Family Doctor, mostly republished with permission from the Bellevue Literary Review and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Many thanks...
- Guest Blog: I Want To Work In A Hospital
Cortney Davis is the author of four poetry collections, most recently "Leopold's Maneuvers," winner of the 2003 Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize. She is co-editor of two anthologies of poetry and prose by nurses, "Between the Heartbeats" and "Intensive...
Medicine
Guest Blog: Cure
Veneta Masson is a registered nurse and poet living in Washington, DC. She has written three books of essays and poems, drawing on her experiences over twenty years as a family nurse practitioner and director of an inner-city clinic. Information about her poetry collection Clinician's Guide to the Soul is available at sagefemmepress.com. The following poem from that collection was originally published online in Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine.
**
CURE
In Latin it means care,
conjures priests and temples
the laying on of hands
sacred pilgrimage
sacrifice
the sickbed
invalid and
solemn attendants.
How far we have come.
Today's English
has neatly expunged
those purely human elements.
Cure is impersonal, consequential
unequivocal, sometimes violent -
the annihilation
of the thing that ails.
This nurse
approaching the patient
has discarded temple garb
for practical scrubs.
His gloved hands
unsheathe the magic bullet,
shoot it through the central line
where it locks onto the target cells.
For the not-yet-cured,
there is still sacred pilgrimage -
that dogged slog
to the high tech shrine,
the health food store,
the finish line of the annual race
where, etched on each undaunted face,
is a gritty tale of survival.
- Veneta Masson
- Guest Blog: A Snail's Pace
Eric Cheng is a primary care physician for the VA, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA, a devoted husband and father, and an occasional poet. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he draws inspiration from his patients' incredible...
- A Different Perspective On Screening For Breast Cancer
A nurse practitioner and writer living in Washington, DC, Veneta Masson contributed a guest post to Common Sense Family Doctor earlier this year. This month, she published a thought-provoking piece in the journal Health Affairs, titled "Why I Don't...
- Guest Blog: Writing Poems On Antidepressants
Nikki Moustaki is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught at New York University, Indiana University, and the New School. The following poem was first...
- Favorite Guest Blogs
This post links to a selection of moving poetry and short fiction pieces previously featured on Common Sense Family Doctor, mostly republished with permission from the Bellevue Literary Review and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Many thanks...
- Guest Blog: I Want To Work In A Hospital
Cortney Davis is the author of four poetry collections, most recently "Leopold's Maneuvers," winner of the 2003 Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize. She is co-editor of two anthologies of poetry and prose by nurses, "Between the Heartbeats" and "Intensive...