A nurse’s poetry

A poem in three poignant parts.

“Suffering” [2:20 min].

Image: Jon Gordon

For the past two decades, Cortney Davis has devoted three days of her workweek to nursing—which provides continual inspiration for her writing—and the rest to putting thoughts on paper. As the co-editor of two anthologies of poetry and prose by nurses, Between the Heartbeats and Intensive Care, she writes essays about nursing, too. Davis has also written hundreds of poems, many of which have been compiled in Leopold’s Maneuvers and Details of Flesh.