This is actually a re-write of an older poem I wrote around the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans back in 2005. A USA Today account of what happened at St. Rita’s Nursing Home after the levees and dams broke:
A wall of water … hit the building, rose up the sides and then burst […]
In Japanese poetry there is the jisei, or death poem, the idea that on their death bed, in the final moment of life, a poet would compose a haiku summarizing their thoughts on death … or life … or whatever it is we think about as we leave this life for whatever comes next. […]
Nurse aides — certified nursing assistants — are some of my greatest heroes. They are the “men and women obscure in their labor,” as President Obama put it, who are the “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.” They are a career that gets over-looked in the world of the arts … […]
Of the few nurse aides to write about their experiences perhaps the first and the most famous is that of Walt Whitman, “the Good, Gray Poet.” His book, “Drum-Taps,” written during the American Civil War, describes his role as a nurse tending to the wounded and dying that came back in floods from the […]
About six months ago I began writing a series of sonnets concerning my life as a certified nurse aide (C.N.A.). It’s a curiously important, hight-stress, low-paid job; taking care of the elderly and dying. It is also curious how much we fear the end of life in our culture. We have no […]
In a heartbeat worlds collide/ I’ve been told if wishes were horses/ In a heartbeat beggars would ride … — Laura Love, “In a Heartbeat” from the CD Pangaea
I commute an hour each way to Grand Rapids, MI, nowadays. I pass by the same things each time: the dozen or so carcasses of deer, […]
There, my friends! National Whomp Up Poetry Book month is over! The goal was to write a poem a day for all of February, in any style, based on a theme of your choice. I chose my experiences as a nurse aide. There has been a lot to pick from. […]
One day left! Tomorrow will be the big day … how exciting. This has been an exciting way to explore a theme. Nurse Aide Sonnets. Not all of them well-thoughtout or to the point, but a theme regardless. Cheers, everyone who helped.
Someone dies and for six months you don’t write.
Just […]
On Friday I quibbled with a dear co-worker. It is easy to write these words up into poetry but much, more harder tomorrow to go in and apologize for my hot temper. Being mind-bogglingly exhausted combined with unending tension of residents attempting to walk to the bathroom unaided with a broken hip or […]
Hmm … I see I might be repeating myself.
Eight hours of jam pack thrills, by which I mean,
work. Work against residents’ destructive
urges. Against obscene drama, obscene
conditions. The State waits, servile, passive,
never addressing Administrators
who cut costs by having nurse aides work “short;”
who fire at will any malcontents. Slurs
aside; for each mishap, lack […]
Only five days left of National Whomp Up Poetry Book contest! How are your poetry series going? Do you find it easy to write a poem a day for a month?
Some posts I write need a little background information. Not everything I do as a nurse aide is clear. There are […]
In his review of Jarman’s and Mason’s Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism in the Antigonish Review, Keith Maillard says the following of New Formalism:
[Jarman and Mason] claim, quite rightly, that “the most significant development in recent American poetry has been a resurgence of meter and rhyme, as well as narrative, among large […]
Laura Love’s CD Octoroon is playing, beautifully. As is with a lot of things in my profession, nurse aides (as well as everyone within the medical field) are governed by an unspoken code of conduct. “To help heal.” “To help serve.” “To help protect.” Something like that. Still, I know my […]
I am not sure where the motivation of this poem came from. I think I found the French phrase first and thought about how I could put it into a poem. Shelby warns me that dropping foreign phrases and words into poetry is a bit posh, especially if the reader has no idea […]
We are poets who are in love with single word titles. Something a bit odd, with double or triple meanings, is nice. A poem about a dying star and an affair called Quirk. A poem about a beloved dog called Clod. This is a shame, really. Titles aren’t as flashy […]
“solid life, of crime/ a man of odd circumstance/ a victim of ghetto demands/ feed me money for [stahuh]/ and i’ll let you trip for a while/ insecure from the past/ how long can a good thing last?”
– Curtis Mayfield, Pusherman
Mozart’s Don Giovanni is on the stereo, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan. It is […]
I have been reading my neighbor Thomas Lynch’s Still Life in Milford. He isn’t exactly my neighbor, but more a neighbor than Garrison Kellior or Kevin Young. Milford is just down the road from me. I like the image of the Midwest widows, having out lived their husbands, in his poem, West […]
I lived in Armenia for two years over ten years ago (1995 - 1997) as a Peace Corps volunteer. I never mastered the language, “H’yeren,”1 but still can recall a few phrases and questions.
At times this job calls on skills I have no doubt were never on my radar when I decided […]
If, nothing else, this chance to work as a nurse aide has provided me with endless things to be wary about growing old. Not that growing is problematic, mind you. Just that if you live long enough there are so many ways human existence can become so fascinatingly problematic. Take “sundowning,” for […]
This might count as “bittersweet.” I just got back from Lansing’s 14th Annual Burning Desires Poetry Celebration today. Ah, Saint Valentine’s Day! It gets me thinking of how precious this emotion we call “love” is. Even as I write that statement I realize how unoriginal, cliche, commonplace it is for a […]
Here we are at Day 10 of the National Whomp Up Poetry Book Month! How are your poems coming? I shall be interested in seeing what you are writing when it is all done.
As with many careers there are a lot of different levels to nursing. When I first started thinking about […]
U.T.I. stands for “Urinary Tract Infection,” a common ailment in our older population. Cranberry juice is a wonderful natural cure. Before this job I thought everyone would be gulping down prune juice at work but it is cranberry with most meals, it turns out.
Today we were told to “straight cath” Sheila
in Room One-Thirty. […]
Superstitions are curious things. Everyone has at least one, even my scientist parents who dismiss the spirit world as a curiosity. Even I have my doubts; they say at work we lose people in threes. Already this month we’ve lost two residents. Now three. Someone I love, one of my […]
I do not know about other nurses in other parts of the world, but as a rest home aide I find the resources available for me to help get through not just the day, but more traumatic events (the death of a beloved resident, family members coming unglued or shell shocked, etc.) are not forthcoming. […]
So, what will be considered cheating during this National Whomp Up Poetry Book month? I had the idea at the time that every day I should write a new poem, that creating new work would be the motivation to get me through this bleak month. However, during January I had begun to dabble […]
Slowly, slowly I am writing my certified nurse aide poetry. Sort of a clunky title, but it will do for now, for my job is sort of clunky as well. If, on reflection, these seem angry poems, I suppose they are. I have never really talked to anyone else about this (except […]
While it is true nurse aides have a high burn out rate (rarely have I met older aides who have made this a career, though there are a few strong souls who cross my path who have done just that) unlike fire fighters or members of bomb disposal teams, this is not a life threatening […]
My resident “Crysta” I wrote about in NaWUPoBo #1 passed away yesterday. She is not the first person I have been present with who has died, but her passing brought up certain questions I have not been able to answer. Since we are culture that lacks death rite ceremonies, no singing, no […]
As with a lot of things in my world, it is not the small kindnesses I focus on, but rather the large injustices. Or, to put it a little differently, I cannot but help focus on the way we treat one and other. There are days I wish Plato had chosen not poets […]
Yesterday I wrote What [being a nurse aide] teaching me, among other things, is how questionable are our convictions, not only concerning what it means to die, but what we desperately want to believe “dying” means. I would add to that as a culture, there are many subjects that affect the elderly that are […]
I am currently a nurse aide by trade, working with a large geriatric population. That means I spend a lot of time with the dying and about to die. What this is teaching me, among other things, is how questionable our convictions are; not only concerning what it means to die, but what […]