“It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there,” wrote the iconic physician-poet William Carlos Williams.

In my native language Shona, a popular aphorism advises “seka urema wafa.” Roughly translated, it means “laugh at a cripple when you are dead.” In Shona, idioms like this are called tsumo.

No OFF-button on the frickin' remote;
the tv hangs like an eye
which you watch prophilactically,
in case it might fall.

As a young medical student,

I sat across from my patient in the old neuro ward.

A retired high school English teacher,

I knew she was once quite sharp.

As is usual practice at the Multi-Service Center, a homeless shelter in the heart of San Francisco, I was sent out to recruit patients from the men’s floor.

Let me die in winter

Let me die in solitude

past midnight

with a flask of spirits

a cigarette that won’t kill me

winking at the stars

Let me die with my back