No matter how I try my hair won’t grow back. The power’s gone out, someone saw wires arcing down the block. We find a lantern in the garage that still casts enough light. The time is never right but this is probably not the time to say it. Something’s burning in the house, […]
An Introduction to The Fence Portfolio of Writing by Professional Nurses
Fence 39 has coalesced during the 21st century’s first pandemic, a globalinflection point — or ongoing duration — from which we must all pivot. No matter the scope of the task before us, we ask ourselves how do we do this, now? How can we do this now? And the fuzzy and foggy shape of […]
White Rainbow
The army held the baby in chains. It broke free. It was quite easy. At 158 feet high, it towered over the army and its tanks. It tore the metal wrapped around its wrists and legs with its eight baby teeth. The baby wobbled toward the freight train yard, as it liked trains, liked the […]
The Bureau of Hards
One year at summer camp, I met a girl who told me about all the different things she’d managed to send, unpackaged, through the US Postal Service. I sorely wish I remembered her litany of unexpected items. The one thing I do recall is that she had once addressed a shoe, a Converse All-Star, she […]
Welcome to Warehouse
Floorworker I thought: I like taking pictures. Facilitating the fulfillment of others’ image-making could be an honest way to make a decent living. It’s tangential to my interests at best, but at least I could feign interest, more so than at the interview with the editorial department of the luxury magazine with photo spreads devoted […]
From me to others: a short reflection
I started writing a journal during the pandemic, but as deaths numbers increased, everything seemed very narcissistic. Writing about my mundane daily experiences of a nursing researcher seemed meaningless and selfish, so I stopped and focused on working on awareness and health education. I started with my family, those close to me […]
The Hospice Ogre
I won’t forget the day the boss leaned into my office doorway at the hospice and said, “They’re calling it a pandemic.” I stared at him. “We’re in a pandemic. It begins now.” We’d seen it coming; still, we looked at one another to mark our last moment of pre-pandemic innocence, the […]
“Sheltering in Place for Beginners” & “As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room”
Sheltering in Place for Beginners Are you awake? You have relied on anesthesia during the scapel’s trusty removals. In the ice melt of morning sit still, read jokes. Wind predicts drought. You will grow strong in your heart’s ribbed hospital. Become the blue rising up over your bed. Wake to smell a […]
The problem was I could see it
The jammed hallways packed emergency room, the ICU. I could feel the mounting panic in the chest of the staff making it difficult to breathe. The sweat beneath their scrubs and yellow long-sleeved gowns. Their latex gloved hands, N95’d mouths plastic shielded faces. I could see the underground corridor that connected one part of the […]
Did I Deserve to Die When I Was Drunk?
When I meet Peter, he is the first patient I’ve cared for in almost a full year who is capable of smiling. During this pandemic, almost all the patients in our ICU have been so critically ill that they could not smile. They were intubated and sedated, a tube sticking out of their mouth and […]
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