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  • The Hand that Sees
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The Hand that Sees

These are the Hands - by Michael Rosen

{ Poem }

for the 60th anniversary of the NHS
/
/ These are the hands
/ That touch us first
/ Feel your head
/ Find the pulse
/ And make your bed.
/
/ These…

The Curator - by Norman Kreitman

{ Poem }

Step this way, sir. Just here you may see
/ a child’s head so full of water
/ that the world’s alarms were quite…

Dissection of an Infant – Vascular Preparation - by Anne MacLeod

{ Poem }

I would have loved you, wept
/ with your father and your mother
/ over these tiny perfect hands, perfect feet
/
/ preserved skin-free, en-pointe –
/ as…

The Rafa-Gaza Road 1918 - by Anne MacLeod

{ Poem }

I am looking, as you are, through Henry Wade
/ his eyes, his lens: the Rafa-Gaza road
/ aching towards a sky perhaps grey,…

A Continuity Problem - by Frank Kuppner

{ Poem }

A Continuity Problem
/
/ 1.
/ Machines for fixing
/ machines for fixing machines
/ for fixing machines.
/
/ 2.
/ For a waiting-room,
/ it’s perfect. We don’t even
/ realise we’re there.
/
/ 3.
/ ‘I’d rather…

My Mother’s Body Interrogated By Light - by Gerrie Fellows

{ Poem }

This is what happened
/ Someone lifted a grey translucency to the light
/ and held it there
/ seeing the knit fracture in the clavicle
/ the…

Corneal Graft - by Kevin MacNeil

{ Poem }

For all the eye specialists I’ve seen – in varying degrees of haziness – over the years,
/ and for the…

To the Eye Surgeon - by John Burnside

{ Poem }

‘my eyes have seen what my hand did’
/ — Robert Lowell
/
/ No matter what we say, we still believe
/ the soul is here,…

Microbes - by Dilys Rose

{ Poem }

smaller than the eye can see the living dead
/ floating in limbo awaiting a host
/
/ we don’t discriminate we’ll invade anyone
/ occupy your secret places incubate and…

The Man With Three Legs - by Diana Hendry

{ Poem }

From the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery,
/ University of St Andrews
/ In the autumn of 1948 a message was received from a…

Skin is Time and Lets Itself be Flayed - by Iain Bamforth

{ Poem }

He saw, or thought he saw,
/ his skin become time’s curvature …
/ Having peeled it off, he holds it
/ up for further inspection
/ in…

Voluntary Redundancy - by Christine De Luca

{ Poem }

‘There is at least a moderate risk that there is in your family
/ an alteration in a gene that can cause…

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