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Cortney Davis

My Friend Stacy Works in the Emergency Room

by Cortney Davis

May 2022

―and during the pandemic sparks a love
for classical music, on her way to work

listens to Pavarotti, the audio clip
of his debut at twenty-six, filling in

for the great Giuseppe Di Stefano,
perhaps disappointing the audience

but they cheered when Pavarotti sang high C—
that impossible note—as unforgettable

as the faces of patients overcome
by the virus as suddenly as a young tenor

might bring the audience to their feet.
I love how the crowd was blown away, she tells me,

while all around her, the cries of families
not allowed to be with the dying.

―and making rounds my friend
holds music in her pocket. Some days

it’s Mozart’s Coronation Mass, especially
Credo, something to believe in as she pauses

at each patient’s bed. Other days it’s Amor Sacro
by Vivaldi, a priest who composed music

in his head during mass, held a rosary until
taking up a pen to write an opera.

―and during a code, when the ER is a chaos
of shouts and mechanical chimes, when sweat

soaks masks and gowns and doctors pump
a patient’s chest, breaking ribs that cage

a suffering heart, it’s then my friend plays Bach’s
Goldberg Variations, music for the pianist

to play every night to soothe a sleepless Count,
music that marks time with all that must be done

to keep a soul alive, sounds more beautiful
than the hiss and whoosh, the final dead-air space

of silence. And after, my friend turns the music low
for the rituals said over each ruined body―

music become blessings offered
every day, every night, and then again.


Cortney Davis is the author of five poetry collections, including Daughter (Grayson Books) and I Hear Their Voices Singing (Antrim House Books). Her non-fiction includes When the Nurse Becomes a Patient and The Heart’s Truth (Kent State University Press). Her honors include the NEA Poetry Fellowship and three CT Commission on the Arts Poetry Grants. Cortney was the first poet laureate of Bethel, CT. www.cortneydavis.com

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