Category: Poetry

Alexis Gutierrez
Medical Student, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine

If I could just listen to
your every thought unspoken,
your heartbeat when I draw near,
the feeling of our two bodies embracing,
or the vibration of your clapping hands.

If I could just listen to
your teardrops slowly descending,
your tired eyes blinking awake,
your half smile accepting the truth,
or the motion of your hand waving goodbye.

If I could just listen to these things,
might I better understand
what it means
to be
human?

Lucas Saporito
Medical Student, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine

You felt the earthquake.
The shake in moral the ground as it radiated around.
Some buildings shook, some buildings swayed
Some buildings fell to their knees and prayed.

But did you feel the aftershocks?
The rock we stand on stressed again and again.
We all knew it was coming,
But then the question was how big and when.

Did it shake you down to your core?
The floor you stand on no longer strong
From years of being cut and chipped away
By chisels hardened with fear and hate.

Or did you sleep through the aftershocks?
Behind lock and key, fell back asleep
With the comfort that your house’s foundation
Was never threatened by the Earth’s vibration.

How might the aftershock reopen scars?
The bars that stopped so many from reaching the top
Appear taller now as buildings crash down
From tremor after tremor in the hollow ground.

But are not some aftershocks manmade?
They bade goodbye to years of oppression.
They cry for this twisted system we live in to fall
And ask everyone, in unison, to answer the call.

Will you feel those aftershocks?
There will be more, so if you choose to ignore
Them you will find that you cannot.
You will feel them. They won’t be for naught.

Sophia Liang
Medical Student, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine

If I could just listen to words 
And verbs and phrases just like 
Everyone else without outside help  
Without having to process all the extra information 
Sensations, ambiguity, body language 
And know what the person is trying to say 
Instead of bending my comprehension in machinations 
Around unyielding impossibilities like  
Assumption or implication or even someone else’s emotion 
I don’t know how to impute naturally what you feel 
I don’t know how to acquire what you mean 
I can only see the world from myself 
A single point of view stretching linearly into perspective  
But others I think or I have heard 
Exist and comprehend on a different spectrum  
Where things just come naturally or are taught to them 
From a young age, the ability to gauge 
A room socially appropriately engagingly  
While I stand off in the corner 
Wondering what really is being said   

Makeen Yasar
Equity, Inclusion, & Diversity Coordinator, Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine

when you think you’re alone
find comfort where the light don’t touch
in the shroud of dusk and royal skies
where the sun’s head is laid to rest
and you can sit in the sand with the dark’s good company

she tells me I am safe here, at least for awhile
and to mind the visitors that she has called to the shoreline
to look for my kinfolk who tread across sand underneath the dock

silver braids on ivory skin fall past a grey dress, parted by her lover’s arms
waves sit atop his head like the waters
behind them, a boy’s Afro puff can be seen
held tightly by a band of brothers who lumber through the grain
as a procession of bikers pass through like azure streaks
their skin flashes bronze over dusty cement

this is the comfort we find by the pacific
this beach has become sanctuary in the years since we’ve came
and in the shroud of dusk and royal skies
we are family
as we sit here in the arms of night
connected by a thread