Body Language: Poems of the Medical Training Experience

Body Language: Poems of the Medical Training Experience is an anthology comprised of poems by physicians and medical students chronicling their unique, often harrowing experiences. The anthology is broken into six sections: Medical Student; First Year; Second Year; Clinical Years; Intern; Resident; and Attending. The collection is truly unique in medical literature. With trained physicians who are also skilled poets addressing a diverse range of medical situations, Body Language offers fascinating insight into the inner world of people who regularly face life-and-death decisions. Edited by Neeta Jain, Dagan Coppock, and Stephanie Brown Clark.

Exposed (to her cadaver) by Rishi Doshi

My fingers course
Through rivers of blood
Parched from seasons without rain
A man once despaired
To hold you so close
Yet never could see what I've seen
I must apologize
For not being gentle
This heartstring of yours
Must snap in the name of our intimacy
And your loveable idiosyncrasies
I call anomaly
As per the instructions
I commit you
To bits of fleeting recollection
And my gratitude,
May only show when I too am discarded
To lie with decades exposed
A gift preserved in petals
Of desiccated rose