The patients cling to us. They think we have answers. We think we have answers. But every night I go home and all I have are numbers echoing in my head—oxygen saturation, pulse rate, blood pressure, beeping monitors. I try to sleep and see lines, peaks and valleys, the last rhythms of strangers.

I don’t want to be so tight-hearted,

but cannot watch closely a paper fortune teller

with every square reading disaster.

There’s a desperation in Maggie’s eyes, and in her unhesitating violence.  Could there be more going on than just some action that instinct drew out of her?  Could there be frustration?  Anger?  I’m reminded of how doctors used to slap human babies to help introduce them to breathing outside of their mothers.  Something we learned from the animals?

Water likes to take the path of least resistance, and when I’m stuck with a bad case of writer's block, finding that path of least resistance helps.

She doesn’t even know if tonight will erase her brother’s odious laughter from her memory. All she knows is that for the first time in her eight and a half years, Mason deserves to be punished.

Baltimore shimmers in the record heat. I shiver

at the new smells baked out of the harbor

Something as simple as a format, theme, or adherence to style can not only provide a jumping off point to get that curser moving, but I have found that it actually gives me room to be inventive in a substantive way. If nothing else, it provides a false, reminiscent whisper of my teenage rebellion. What’s more motivating than that?

My fear is that my daughter won’t get her stem cells before Putin starts a nuclear war; she will be left here with nothing in her bone marrow. If she gets the transplant, we have two days at least after that.

“That’s my daughter. She ran off. They found her a couple towns away,” Mannie said. “If you’re gonna stay here for a while, you better wash up. I can’t have you getting blood on the carpet.”

“I want to tell her that cowbirds aren’t even from Texas. That they just ended up there in search of food. In search of something better.”

When we found ourselves approaching the topic’s borders, one of us would inevitably duck—generally me. On occasion Julie would land a glancing jab, but never a knock-out. The issue: She wanted children; I did not.

The soldiers stand in rows, one behind the other. Their parachutes are connected to a metal bar and when they jump out of the plane, the parachute is automatically triggered. They jump from only 1500 feet so the landings are fast and hard. They spend most of their training learning how to fall.

Poetry offers one answer: fragmentation. If I have gaps in my memory of the event, I can leave the gaps in the poem with white space, enjambment, or incomplete sentences.

With blue-wrapped hands,

they’ll trace her esophagus and stomach

all barnacled with tumors.

September has finally arrived, and its brought a brand new Barnstorm editorial team along with it!