Roxanne Halpine Ward
The Medical Editor at the Simulation Conference
Plastic bodies with heartbeats and breath,
programmed for the day’s lesson: starting IVs,
assessing for trauma, listening to the heart,
making hard choices here in the lab
where no one will die and students can stop,
rewind, do it again, until you get it right.
To support this simulated storyland,
booths in the exhibit hall offer life-size
dolls that give birth, arms with veins
you can prick again and again. Educators loiter,
browsing for CPR manikins, trading tips
on making it more realistic, higher fidelity.
They become storytellers on campus:
mixing up a moulage that looks
just like vomit, scripting out
the patient scenario, using plastic props
to teach caring for flesh. Rehearsing,
so that after graduation when it happens for real,
new nurses will remember how, in the sim lab,
they’ve already dealt with opioid overdose,
diabetic foot ulcer, post-surgical atelectasis—
gained expertise by study and practice
and fiction--and they’ll know what to do
because they remember a story.
we have a pig balloon
no really
my husband brought it home
pink and shiny
separate balloon sections for the legs
pointed ears and a bump
for its curly tail
after the novelty
but not the helium
has mostly drained away
someone puts the pig balloon
in the downstairs bathroom
where it fits perfectly
in the space above the sink
it hovers there
watching us pee
This morning my daughter
comes in my room early
cuddling till the alarm goes off
but I’m not thinking about
her breath on my neck
cold toes on my thigh
I am writing this poem in my head
about the pig balloon
trying to hold
all the words sounds
line breaks
in my mind until it’s time
to turn on the light
I don’t think it’s ever
coming down
Moo at 70 mph
I am the sort of person who, driving
the highway through farmland, sees
the cows peaceful on the hillside
and moos. Alone in the car, mooing
with the surprising rush of joy
at their gentle presence, brown
and black bodies bold against green—
like cow toys at this distance.
A calf, color of my caramel latte
in the cupholder, startles to his feet
and trots off in all his little sweetness,
then it’s trees, exit signs, faded diner
billboard, whizzing by like every moment
on this highway, every classic rock block
on the radio, each breath in the space
between here and there, every
mile marker, every moo.
Roxanne Halpine Ward is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a past attendee of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. Her work has appeared in the Georgia Review, Greensboro Review, and the Sow's Ear Poetry Review, among others, and her chapbook, This Electric Glow, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2012.