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Large Woman, Half
Alyson Porter
University of New Mexico
School of Medicine
JAMA. 1999;282:823.
THIRD PLACE
Large woman, half-sitting
wrecked among the creased sheets,
tubes, sharp needles, blue blankets
incurious
Her loose white and rain-gray hair
stripes pillows
She has the preoccupied jelly gaze
of a fish
Under the gown, she has been cracked
down her center
And shut tight again.
There is dried blood
traveling the long barbed seam.
Bent to listen,
there are gusts
Newspaper crackling
against the wire fence of suture
New wine bubbling up
A door banging open into an empty room
Heavy trucks on an unfamiliar stretch
of highway
Branches gnashing the tin roof of a shed
Or birds settling in zoo cages at dusk?
I move the stethoscope again
and again
Again
Pressing
It stamps the warm freckled flesh
Even the fabric murmurs
Explaining
Well, I am new to this
I cannot fully appreciate your
heart sounds.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
For more information about the William Carlos Williams Poetry Contest for Medical Students, visit the MSJAMA Web site at www.ama-assn.org/msjama.
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