Tag: health

My Daughter with MS Has Another MRI by Terri Kirby Erickson

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My Daughter with MS Has Another MRI

For Gia

Soon my daughter will slip into those loose
pajamas sans her silver earrings, necklaces,
and bracelets, as well as the funky shoes she
often finds in thrift stores. She will lie down
on a narrow table which slides into an MRI
with an IV filled with contrast dripping into
her vein. And surrounding her beloved body
that was once part of my body and still feels
that way, is a giant magnet making intermit-
tant loud noises that sound just like a herd
of stampeding horses. So my daughter will
close her eyes and pretend she’s someplace
else—perhaps a beach in Corolla where wild
mustangs roam, as images of her brain and
spinal cord are magically recorded. For me,
this is a time for prayer, for wanting to trade
places with her, for asking that she be healed.
I will approach the throne of my God on my
knees, every part of me a supplicant, a beggar
for mercy. New lesions, if there are any, may
mean more disability, pain, and suffering for
my throwback sixties yet born in the eighties,
bread-baking, bead-wearing flowerchild with
her dreamcatcher collection, piercings, and
colorful tattoos—and the kind of inner light
that no amount of contrast could ever capture.

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Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Light That Follows Us Home (Fall, 2026, Press 53). Her work has received multiple honors, including the International Book Award for Poetry, Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Atlanta Review International Book Award, Gold Medal in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, Board of Regents Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and many more. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including Aethlon, “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Poet’s Market, Rattle, Sport Literate, The Christian Century, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily among many others. She lives with her husband in North Carolina.

Ode to My Spine by Valerie Bacharach

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Ode to My Spine

Vertebrae, pale as winter sun, fixed in place
by screws tiny as a newborn’s fingernail.
Trace its path on the x-ray—
a trail alive with reconnecting protons and electrons.
When I sit in silence, I can hear
the swift flow of blood,
ligaments with their quiet song.
Nerves freed from compression flare
down my leg like last night’s lightning.
Muscles speak again in the body’s code—
contract and release, release and contract.
My spine’s aging column holds me
erect as one foot steps forward,
hovers in space above sidewalk,
breath held tight in lungs, my future a tenuous thing.

*

Valerie Bacharach is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Her book, Last Glimpse, will be published by Broadstone Books. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem Birthday Portrait, Son, published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net.