This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington (Able Muse Press 2022).
Hospital Vigil
While doctors operate, striving to save Pete’s life,
I walk a windowless corridor—no clocks,
surely past midnight—find the neurosurgery
waiting room, open the door and stop,
ambushed by aromas of Sunday dinner.
A family eats, rosary beads slid wordlessly,
chairs and loveseats pulled around a table
spread with fried chicken in a bucket,
quarts of slaw, baked beans, mashed potatoes.
Plastic cutlery and napkins sealed in packets
like surgical instruments. A stranger offers me
a paper plate, bland as a communion wafer,
inviting me to sit down with them, break
bread, pray this picnic won’t become a wake.
Janis Harrington is the author of How to Cut a Woman in Half (Able Muse Press, 2022), a Finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her first collection, Waiting for the Hurricane, was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award by the North Carolina Poetry Society. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she won the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina where she co-hosts a monthly reading series for a local independent bookstore. 
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