Tag: doctor

A Body Wholly Body by Jeff Newberry

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A Body Wholly Body

There is order in the way the nurse calls
me back to the scale, where I step
up to be weighed and therefore judged.
I’m taken to a small room to await
the coming doctor—sans plague mask—
who enters with on light feet
and sits, taps a clipboard, and prophesies
my future of fat, my heart, my veins
thick with cholesterolled sludge.
The heart beats. The blood pumps.
The pricked index tells my story
of late-night snack cakes and long
afternoons spent, legs crossed, a book
on my lap instead of placing one foot
in front of the other on a track or street.
My body is bonded and printed
on neat white paper. My body
is signed and directed to a lab
where a bored nurse draws more blood.
Everything lined, sketched, and charted.
Tell me, if you know, my doctor,
why the pale light of this exam room
and the cold steel of the exam table
call to mind a chilly January
when they laid my father in a coffin.
Tell me why when I look back
on that day, I remember nothing
save silence and the weight of a body
laid low, sinking down into the earth.

*

Jeff Newberry’s most recent book is the hybrid collection Frames: A Memoir (Another New Calligraphy). His writing has appeared in a number of print and online publications, recently appearing in Stone Circle Review, Sursurrus, and Sugar House Review.

Recurrence by Abriana Jetté

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Recurrence
The conversation went exactly as one might have expected
though not as one would have hoped.
The Dr. came in, listened carefully. Asked questions
I had not been asked before.
Nodded his head.
Understood from a place perhaps provoked by age –
he was just a few years older and had a sister,
he said. I’m going to talk to you like you were my sister, he said,
time and time again.
He told me to look at what he was seeing.
He held my hand.
*
Poet, essayist, and editor, Abriana Jetté’s work can be found in Best New Poets, Teachers & Writers Magazine, PLUME, Tampa Review, Poetry New Zealand, and has been supported by the Sewanee Writers Conference, where she was a Tennessee Williams Scholar, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, the Southampton Writers Conference, and other places. She is a two time recipient of finalist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts for Poetry (2023) and nonfiction (2024).

Three Poems by Joan Mazza

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Waiting for the Doctor

Always late, he expected me to wait,
ready for the session’s start,
for me to take off my shoes,
lie down, not to complain or be angry
with him for keeping me waiting

for thirty or forty minutes, an hour,
sometimes two. I always arrive
early, never wanted to keep others
waiting for me. I don’t like
to feel rushed, prefer to allow time

for traffic, trouble, unexpected delays.
I waited in my car outside his house,
counted minutes. In the basement
of his house, I waited, in an area designed
for waiting, mesmerized by three giant

goldfish swimming in his giant tank.
If I was late, I lost that session’s time.
How long is too long to wait for someone
when you have an appointment? What
if he misses your scheduled time or

doesn’t show? If he never offers to
makeup time, he’s teaching you:
Your time doesn’t count. He’s the doctor.
He had important things that made
him late. I had a husband and a dog

waiting for me at home. I’d worked
a full day, had driven forty minutes,
hadn’t made or eaten dinner. I waited.
In charge, my analyst, my God decreed,
You have nothing to be angry about.

*

Tailored, Emerald Green

After Microbiology all day in Miami,
into the night I cut and sewed, hand-
stitched bound buttonholes, covered
buttons, lined the jacket in the same bold
silky fabric as the turtleneck blouse,

a suit that fit me loose enough to flow,
cuffs swaying with my walk, bright green
as the forest I longed for all those years
toiling in Florida. I waltz into my session
aglow, proud of my effort and outcome,
so well completed after a long hiatus
from my sewing machine.

My psychiatrist scowls at my twirl.
Why are you wearing that?
I made it. My voice shakes.
You’re all covered up! It’s a tent!

And so we spend another session
on his interpretation, his certainty
of my need to hide my body
up to my chin, my wearing pants,
not skirts. Proof of my hang-ups
and fears, proof of how much
more therapy I need with him.

*

What did you learn from your therapist?

All my friends were psychopaths
as were the men I dated, no matter if
I met them in church or bars. I was easily

manipulated into paying half, cooking
for men who wouldn’t take me out, only
wanted to get laid. (Didn’t I want sex too?)

Look how gullible and trusting I was
of all the wrong people. How grateful
I should be for his guidance, for teaching

to set limits, to say no, but not to him. When
I protested when he was two hours late
for a session, hours late for dinner, when

he asked to borrow money, when he mocked
my hand-tailored clothes, my haircut, he said,
You have no reason to be angry.

Too gullible and trusting of all the wrong
people, people took advantage. Couldn’t
I see who was being helpful?

*

Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review (forthcoming), Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She stays safely isolated in solitude in rural central Virginia.