RENEE CRONLEY
A Chronically Unhealthy Health Care System
This poem was born out of all the emotions frontline health care workers learn to restrain when having to survive inside a dying system. Frontline workers know the diagnosis, and the inevitable outcome without proper treatment, but the body they operate in doesn’t listen. My piece expresses that tragedy.
from years of gluttony and bloat
and eating itself from the inside
gains weight in all the wrong places
while the organs scream for nutrients
but are starved into submission
and told they have enough to survive
the mouth spouts out grand promises
and spreads them thin over bare bones
of skeleton crews hidden behind policies
until their lip service dries and cracks
and the consequences bleed out
and finally show their teeth.
Renee Cronley is a writer and nurse from Manitoba. She studied Psychology and English at Brandon University and Nursing at Assiniboine Community College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, PRISM international, Off Topic, Love Letters to Poe, NewMyths.com, Weird Little Worlds, ParABnormal Magazine, Black Spot Books, and several other anthologies and literary magazines.
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