For poet and nurse practitioner Cortney Davis, the truth revealed through poetry is similar to what she has experienced in the heightened and urgent dramas that occur in health care—those suspended moments in which a dying heart might be revived or unbearable suffering relieved. We are vulnerable, her poems say, and we are dependent on one another—on the ways in which we care or fail to care for one another, in how we love or fail to love. In poems that are sensual, emotionally searing, and yet unfailingly tender, Davis shines a caregiver’s light on the most intimate details of the human body and the spirit within—how the flesh might betray, how it endures, and how ultimately it triumphs.
ContentsPart I.Nursing 101Selling Kisses at the DinerMornings We Rolled Pills into Fluted CupsSurgical RotationThe Nurse’s First AutopsyApology to the Woman in Room 23StonedIntubating the CorpseAngel of MercyFalling TemperatureAll Night, Lightning Flared SilentlyHeroicsTeaching CPRWomen’s ClinicThe Dark MarksHooked UpAlchemyThe Circulating Nurse Enters the Operating RoomWakingIt Was a Good Year for DreamsPart II.Becoming the PatientPart III.The Ant’s ReprieveThe Nurse’s PocketsA Patient Tells about Her SufferingDiagnosis HIVFollow-Up: Women’s ClinicAstronomyI’m Afraid of the Brief Empty SpaceVisiting the Lightning StruckDistracted by BlackberriesOn Call: SplenectomySpring, Summer, Fall and WinterThe Vocation of IllnessThere Are No Poems at Hospital Management MeetingsKilling the Nurse in the HouseI Want To Work in a HospitalMy EvidenceTwelve Thousand Years AgoHospiceTaking Care of TimeFinding What You Didn’t ExpectFirst Night at the Cheap HotelThe Snake CharmerAuthor’s AcknowledgmentsSeries Acknowledgments
