A Small Needful Fact

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares Ross Gay's poem "A Small Needful Fact," which is based on the events of July 17, 2014, when Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American man, was killed by Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department officer, who put Garner in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 25 years in Psychiatric Times® in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Freud on My Couch.