Alive at the End of the World

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "Alive at the End of the World" by Saeed Jones. Born in 1955, Jones is a Black, queer poet and writer from Lewisville, Texas whose work often explores themes of race, desire, identity, power, grief, and mythology. He is the author of the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, and the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, a winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. Jones has also served as the founding LGBTQ+ editor for BuzzFeed.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 27 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.