Submissions are welcome from oncologists, oncology nurses, and other cancer caregivers. E-mail only, please, to: [email protected], and include affi liation/title, address, and phone number, along with a photo, if available.
Poetry by Cancer Caregivers: Telomeres at Work
BY COREY J. LANGER, MD
Whoever knew
An indestructible aglet
Could spell our doom
Lacing
Into the eyelet
Of a tumor
Like the eye
Of a cyclone
Transposing
An amorphous mass
Of cells
Into deadly
Immortality.......
Poetry by Cancer Caregivers: The care and feeding of laboratory rats
BY COREY J. LANGER, MD
Is crucial, at least till the day of sacrifice,
Gross sectioning; microscopic analysis.
The answers lie hidden
In the lungs or liver -
Petite cells containing
Rare insights,
Rarer cures
Perhaps.
COREY J. LANGER, MD, served for six years as President of Delaware Valley Poets, a grassroots group based in Lawrenceville, NJ, that conducts monthly workshops and hosts monthly readings. He continues to spearhead its monthly readings, which are now done in tandem with US 1 Worksheets at the Princeton Public Library.
He is Professor of Medicine and Director of Thoracic Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Vice-Chair of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group. His poetry has been published in Brooklines, A Muddy River Anthology, A Different Latitude, Thatchwork, Annals of Internal Medicine, Edison Literary Review, Quick and Dirty Poets, Identity Theory, U.S, 1, and U.S 1 Worksheets.
Regarding these two poems, he says: "'Telomeres at Work' was composed while I was developing a PowerPoint presentation on new therapies in advanced NSCLC; and 'The Care and Feeding of Laboratory Rats' was written during a lung cancer conference-I think I had seen one too many xenograft models at that point."