for elizabeth before surgery at m.d. anderson

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

November 2, 2025

you

feeling small with fear . . .

a glow of sun hidden

yet shimmers on the water of waiting . . .

you the poet

will write

as you slowly let your body

voice the elusive

with words you are longing for

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writing appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first published book of poetry is entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53, 2015) and her second, Writing the Stars (Press 53, 2024.) She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020.  

While she gets an MRI

Herman Sutter

November 2, 2025

I sit waiting 

to hear whether she will die 

today 

or a month from now

and there is nothing

to be done 

except wait

in a hard chair

next to an empty one

my butt already tingling 

my back already sore

somewhere beyond the silence

of that door

in a large white tube 

my wife is being ground down 

into bits and bytes

until she is nothing

but a digital report 

on a doctor’s desk

waiting

But aren’t we all waiting

averted eyes empty nods waiting 

just to see:

What will become of me?

All of us here 

waiting

Come      I saved you a chair

Herman Sutter (award winning poet/playwright/essayist) is the author of two chapbooks: Stations (Wiseblood Books), and The World Before Grace (Wings Press), as well as “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” St. Anthony Messenger. His work appears in: The Perch, The Ekphrastic Review, The Langdon Review, Touchstone, The Merton Journal, as well as: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019). His recent manuscript A Theology of Need was long listed for the Sexton prize.