A Mother’s Litany—How to Prepare for a Child’s Hospital Stay
Victoria Melekian lives in Carlsbad, California. Her stories and poems have been published in print and online anthologies and she’s twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Medmic: by professional poets
Two Poems By Paulette Guerin
Paulette Guerin is the author of Wading Through Lethe. Her work also appears in the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry. Her website is pauletteguerin.com
I Wasn’t There
Subhaga Crystal Bacon (she/they) is a Queer poet living in rural Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry including Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, Red Flag Poetry, 2022, and the Isabella Gardner Award winning Transitory, forthcoming in the fall from BOA Editions. This poem first appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review.
Poetry Interview with Melissa McKinstry by Jane Newkirk
Melissa McKinstry holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature, and appear in Rattle, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rust & Moth, December, Tahoma Literary Review, SWWIM, Nimrod International, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Find her at her website: https://www.melissamckinstry.com/
Jane Newkirk is the poetry editor at Medmic. Her poems have appeared in Empty House Press, The Shore, Naugatuck River Review, The Night Heron Barks, Intima, and others. In 2019, her creative nonfiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an occupational therapist in Jackson, Mississippi.
Mama, When Did This Rain Begin?
Darcy Smith’s debut collection, River Skin, came out in June 2022. Smith was awarded the Please See Me Fourth Annual Mental Health Awareness Poetry Prize. She is a Certified Sign Language Interpreter, Buddhist, kickboxer, wife & mother. Smith lives with her husband & their cat, Miley in New York’s Hudson Valley. For more information visit: www.darcysmith.org
My Mother Recovers from a Head Injury
Alecia Beymer is an Assistant Professor – Educator in the English Department at the University of Cincinnati. Her poems have been published in Bellevue Literary Review, The Inflectionist Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Sugar House Review. Her research is focused on literacies formed by space and place, considerations of the interconnected resonances of teachers and students, and the poetics of education. This poem originally appeared in Radar Poetry.
Three Poems by Dave Malone
Dave Malone (he/him) holds degrees from Ottawa University and Indiana State. He is a poet and filmmaker who lives in the Missouri Ozarks. His newest poetry book is Bypass (Aldrich Press, 2023).
Gulfs
Woods Nash is an Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Houston Fertitta Family College of Medicine. My poems are in JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.
Lying on the Patient Table–Gel on the Wand
Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella On the Rocks, winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and the short story chapbook Mother Tongues. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Short Fiction (England), among other publications. Previously, she has served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast and Fiction Editor for Big Fiction. She teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Daughter Gesture
Biographical excerpt from her website: “If this were a resume, I would say that I went to Seattle University intending to become a nurse, but failed emotionally and turned instead to literature. A few years later I earned my Master’s Degree in English. While we lived in Illinois I pursued a Master’s in Library and Information Science and worked as a professional librarian for many years. After caring for my mother through a long illness until her death, I re-careered as a RN specializing in Hospice and Geriatrics, work I continue to practice. I am a wife, a mother and a grandmother.”