Poetry

I drive west along the black granite bed of Cold River as it sweeps down the mountain. My best friend drives the same road east, the lies his wife told the judge trailing us...

Laennec was running late when he saw children send sounds through a wooden beam...

When a health system honcho asks me to see his thirty-year-old son “for a little anxiety” I can only agree. He arrives with a girlfriend, the couple dressed like characters from an Armani ad...

"If only I had this, I would feel that."

A penguin? An igloo? A big snowflake? Weigh in on this Rorschach-type image, just for fun.

Tears track his leathered face like seawater spilled from a sinking hull...

Post-holiday hangover? Here are some comical treatments to beat the winter blues.

My penmanship sucks. So does my typing. I’ve been this way since seventh grade...

Looking out at a flat gray sea, I try to imagine the chasms in the ocean’s floor where lava laced with strontium pours...

A poem written by a psychiatrist: "A faith in human kindness lost, abandonment with lasting cost."

I want my patients to believe I consider Peabody’s advice before I see them, that I recognize our shared humanity...

He smoked trabucos, mild miniatures produced by the Austrian monopoly, but preferred Don Pedros and Reina Cubanos...

The lab results came back and here's what the doctor found.

The trouble with looking like a God becomes clear after we learn to wear our mask of omnipotence, pretending to know the answers to questions...

These books almost write themselves.

His new hip healed in, we’re working on a bluff, talking doctors and health care reform as we shove a new propane tank into place...

As clinicians, we can only imagine what happens when patients terminate treatment. Thoughts from an addiction psychiatry fellow.

Sometimes when proposing a treatment plan, I flash to an image of my patient seated beside me on this orchard bench watching orioles court in May’s sharp sunlight...

"So how did you feel when you found out you weren't a . . .?"

Some novel ideas for the therapy clinic.

Which one is Selective Serotonin and which is Reuptake Inhibitor? Some Friday fun.

Dawn is at five, but I sleep past nine, not caring if I miss a few warblers flying home for summer...

A bit of conference levity as we cover serious issues.

Keeping the season in mind, what is your first impression of this image?

That’s how he’d like to go, he tells me, not by this slow seeding of liver and spine, not with all the tears and long good-byes.

The Big Bad Wolf and Wicked Witch liked to creak the stairs by her bedroom door and wake her from dreams calling, “Daddy!”

On the cracked macadam court in the shadow of The Castle on the Hill, below fake gun turrets built with bricks...

I’m driving home from the ER, not ready for sleep, eaten up by memories of my mistakes...

Featuring this year in Rorschach tests at Psychiatric Times.

We’ve been meeting since his PSA spiked and he decided on surgery. Radiation finished, nerves nicked by the robot...