Maybe it was because I was reading in the waiting room before finding out I'd failed in my plan to ding my cholesterol scores by eating eggs four times a week and bacon at least twice, but the Bellevue Literary Review did it again: clinical accuracy plus warm bedside manner equals me cutting a subscription check. No home runs, but a lot of clean singles:

My belly looks like
a garment taken in
by a tailor's apprentice,
the crazy one
he had to fire.

-- Arlene Eager, "Postoperative Care"

Nice work as ever by Rafael Campo and Priscilla Atkins; the journal's ongoing medical emphasis may or may not mean a higher percentage of contributors who don't identify primarily as writers? not to say amateurs -- I hope the spirit in which I write this will come through: nearly everyone alive now is an amateur. We do this for love.