I Want To Work in a Hospital
where it’s okay
to climb into bed with patients
and hold them—
pre-op, before they lose
their legs or breasts, or after,
to tell them
they are still whole.
Or post-partum,
when they have just returned
from that strange garden,
or when they are dying,
as if somehow because I stay
they are free to go.
I want the daylight
I walk out into
to become the flashlight they carry,
waving it as we go together
into their long night.
Poem courtesy of http://www.cortneydavis.com/
Cortney Davis’ Taking Care of Time is the inaugural winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. This book will be available for sale from Michigan State University Press through their website at www.msupress.org and at bookstores in March 2018.
The RCAH Center for Poetry will represent Wheelbarrow Books at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in March 2018, where there will also be copies available.
The RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU 