Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Cori Feb 2014
If you’ve only ever smelled fir trees covered with freshly fallen snow-
then you haven’t smelled it.
It’s an acquired smell, for sure.
It comes just in between the whiffs of
mashed potatoes
mashed carrots
mashed peas
mashed turkey
hell, mashed ginger-ale for all I know. . .
Somewhere amongst that microwaved menagerie, masked with the smell of eau de toilette,
it lives, and smells sweeter the longer brown sugar bubbles on top of caramelizing yams.  

If you can’t smell it, maybe you can find it.
Not many can, or do.
It hides in plain sight, though.
A lost and found box with accumulated cobwebs - everything still unclaimed.
A flyer for free puppies that no one ever took because they were “too much responsibility.”
Maybe there aren’t enough seekers in this game of empty rooms and blank guest books.
But keep looking, until bingo prize hand-me-downs after school plays look like Oscars.
You won’t see it until it makes you believe that plastic Mardis Gras beads are Tiffany-blue boxes.

It’s not so much in the nose, or the eyes as it is in the endurance.
Endure the voiceless Glenn Miller until his brass bellows become her voice -
whispering “I love you”  to the effortless rhythm of “Moonlight Serenade.”
And imagine her,
swapping her orthopedics for black heels,
elegantly taking Pop’s hand as he helps her up from her wheelchair,
to join him for just one more dance.
Watch as they become the sepia-colored couple in every anniversary photo.
That black dress.  Those fake pearls.  
The crescendo of the band.
It’s hard to miss when it’s screaming at you.
zebra Jul 2
NEWSFLASH: Man, 78, Self-Rebrands as Teenage Femme Bombshell — Nation Loses Grip on Timeline:
EXPOSÉ | The Chrysalis Suite: How One Man’s Transition Shook the Foundations of Memorial General Hospital
Byline: by C. Vallée, Staff Writer for The Subcutaneous Ledger

FROM NURSING HOME TO NIGHTCLUB Parallel reports suggest the revolution began earlier than suspected, when an unnamed 78-year-old male nursing home resident unveiled a Y2K-era makeover and soft-launched as a seventeen year old femme via Instagram named ******. “He looked like the ghost of a prom I never attended,” said one Gen Z influencer. “My sense of time and gender hasn’t recovered.”
Now dubbed bio-camp insurgency by cultural theorists, this movement collapses diagnosis into drag, anatomy into allegory. “Clinical procedure is now performance art,” said Dr. Noor El-Amine, professor of somatic aesthetics at RISD Med.

OUTBREAK OF FABULOUS:
Velcro Orthopedics Rebranded as Adaptive Runway wear
Anatomy Textbooks Recalled Nationwide
Mascara-Smeared Manifestos Appear in Hospital Chapels

Editor’s Note: Panic
ALERT LEVEL Code Cherry: From Pension to Prom Queen — Local Man Time-Travels via Gender Rebrand
In another story that has jolted the local medical community and sent ripples through the hospital’s institutional crust, 67-year-old unnamed man, once a retiree from Radiology with two hip replacements and a fondness for crossword puzzles, emerged last Tuesday reintroduced as Valentina D., cloaked in satin, grace, and unapologetic glamour.

Scrubs Abandoned, Mascara Weaponized — Security Reviews Footage: Surveillance records now archived under “mystic anomalies” show Walter — now Valentina — vanishing into the women’s locker room only to reappear hours later in full regalia: tulle, rhinestones, and a defiant contoured cheekbone. She made her promenade down the East Wing with the resolve of a pageant queen and the mystique of an oracle. Eyewitnesses confirm that several seasoned nurses dropped their clipboards.
What began as a low-key wellness check-up became something closer to myth.

EYEWITNESS: “She Glowed Like the Exit Sign,” says Janitor on Break
Oscar F., night janitor and amateur astrologer, describes the event as “radiant… like an omen or the ****** of a rapture dream.” He adds, “She didn’t walk. She hovered. She beamed. I ain’t been right since.”

HEADS UP: Orthopedics Floor Now Runway — Proceed with Caution
Orthopedics, once home to bedpans and broken pelvises, has reportedly been rebranded as “Ward 9¾,” a liminal space where gender norms go missing and gowns turn to trains. Staff have been advised not to interrupt the newly christened “transitory pageants,” now scheduled every full moon.

EXCLUSIVE: Hospital Insider Leaks Tiara Protocol Draft
A confidential memo outlines a now-shelved set of procedures titled “Operation Glamour Reclamation,” suggesting staff be trained in both trauma care and ballroom etiquette. The document refers to “emergent expressions of divine femininity” and encourages clinicians to “honor shimmer as a legitimate symptom.”

DECONSTRUCTED: Body, Binary, and Other Disposables
Medical ethicists and performance theorists have begun swarming Memorial General, calling the incident “a sacred deconstruction.” Dr. Nina Vega of Queer Phenomena Institute claims, “This isn’t just a personal transition — it’s a metaphysical jailbreak. The patient has successfully trespassed the clinic’s ontology.”
The hospital has yet to issue a formal statement, though a new sign now hangs in the atrium: “BE ADVISED: GENDER MAY NOT BE STABILIZED IN THIS AREA.”

Metro Dispatch — Boston, MA, 3:03 AM
Later that day in an act described by one witness as “the most glamorous Code Red I’ve ever seen,” a third-year medical student at Brightmore University Hospital stunned staff, bloggers, and bioethicists alike after reportedly removing their own genitalia in a hospital restroom and re-emerging 27 minutes later in a backless red sequined dress, a rhinestone tiara, and crystal-strap Jimmy Choo Bings.
Security footage shows the student — formerly known as Stanley G. — strutting down the corridor trailing blood and glitter, hips oscillating somewhere between agony and glamour.
“I thought someone had been attacked,” said orderly Mason Liu. “But then she walked out like she’d just invented gender and fashion in the same breath. I almost saluted.” A faint scent of rosewater and antiseptic lingered.
The hospital declined to comment on whether disciplinary action would be taken. Unofficial sources say a new emergency protocol is being drafted under the title “Code Cherry.”

QUOTE OF THE HOUR
“My body was a curriculum. Now it’s a manifesto.” — She tells stunned cardiology staff, tiara tilted. And when asked by reporters what drove him to it? He smiled through smeared mascara, shook his hips — still glistening with gauze, blood, and rebellion — and said: “I just wanted to feel cute.”
The line has since trended across platforms, emblazoned on tank tops, titanium scalpels, and protest placards across five continents.

OUTBREAK OF FABULOUS
Velcro Orthopedics Rebranded as Adaptive Runway wear
New Protocol “Code Cherry” Goes into Effect Across Multiple Wards
Slay-or-Suture” TikTok Challenge Overtakes Academic Med Tok
Anatomy Textbooks Pulled Pending Emergency Revision: “The Body May No Longer Be Binary”

BREAKING: Elderly Man Reincarnates into Viral Ingénue — Science, Ethics, and TikTok Implode ALERT LEVEL: From Pension to Prom Queen — Local Man Time-Travels via Gender Rebrand
Officials confirm the hospital is reviewing footage under a new emergency classification: “Code Cherry.” A leaked draft of the “Tiara Protocol” is currently circulating on MedTok, where footage of the transformation has sparked the #SlayOrSutureChallenge — now banned in six countries.
A spokesperson for Brightmore declined to comment, citing an ongoing review of hospital guidelines on gender autonomy and aesthetic insurgency. Meanwhile, medical schools across the country are reconsidering curricular materials in light of recent anatomical reinterpretations. As one faculty statement read: “The body may no longer be binary. We’re… reassessing.”

Lady Gaga… just follow the glitter trail. The revolution wears heels now — try to keep up, *******.

Executive Summary:
This document outlines the unprecedented destabilization of national, medical, and moral order catalyzed by the Brightmore Event, now dubbed Operation: Crimson Rebirth. The subject — hereafter referred to as “Entity Cuterina” — has initiated a high-speed cultural insurgency rooted in glamour-fueled gender mutiny, rendering all traditional ideological safeguards inert.

Post-Binary Aesthetic Weaponization (PBAW).
Primary Concerns:
Cultural Reach: Within 18 hours of the incident, #ICU Glamour surpassed national defense hashtags in digital engagement. TikTok influencers have begun performing simulated scalpeless rebirths to the tune of “Like a Prayer.”

Architectural Contagion: Hospital bathrooms — once strongholds of fluorescent despair — have begun emitting a low hum of possibility. Early reports indicate patients refusing to return to gendered wings unless “a proper lighting palette is installed.”

Moral Collapse of Youth: Gen Z+ have adopted red sequined gowns as daily wear. Reports abound of high school students submitting term papers as fragrance.

Doctrinal Schisms: Several prominent clergy members have defected to the movement, performing rites in press-on nails and singing updated verses of “How Great Thou Art” in full falsetto.

Institute Recommendations: Tactical Aesthetic Suppression Immediately requisition all remaining stocks of matte foundation and khaki. Subdue sparkle with “neutral-tone patriotism” campaigns.

Counter-Incantation Protocols Begin circulation of phrase “Respect the Binary. Revere the Clipboard.” Secure trademark rights to “Feeling cute is not a strategy.”

Gender Neutrality Containment Zones (GNCZs) Establish federally monitored “no-pronoun safe rooms” equipped with fluorescent lighting, Muzak, and damp beige chairs.

Emergency Moral Consultants Rehire Jordan Peterson in holographic format to whisper cautionary parables into hospital vents.

Incident Fallout:
AMA board chair Dr. Felix Grunberg reportedly sighted sobbing into a bedazzled otoscope.
Four interns from the think tank’s Youth Policy Unit have defected — citing “irreversible shimmer awakening.” They left a note reading: “My body is a mood board, not your metric.”
One analyst was discovered lip-syncing policy drafts in the breakroom mirror, now presumed radicalized.

The National Spasm: Monitoring the Margins Since the Enlightenment Got Weird
…..News Flash

The Brightmore Incident has made it clear that we were unprepared for ontological improvisation in heels. Institutional binaries are dissolving in real time, and no amount of comb-over rationalism can contain the spread.
We hereby request an emergency 500 million USD “Glitter Defense Fund” to research matte-resistant ideology, reinforce conservative bathroom architecture, and develop voice-based gender verification drones.
“Time is running out while normalcy is on life support. In the meantime, she’s still dancing.”
a poem wearing heels on linoleum— a drag-ball elegy inscribed in hospital ink, a manifesto disguised as discharge paperwork slipped beneath the tongue like a sublingual truth.

🩰 A Performance Poem
Meant not just to be read but embodied— hips swaying, mascara weeping, clipboard dropping. Where each stanza struts.

🌙 A Surrealist Hymn
Warping logic the way gender warps in dream, where sequins echo sutures and blood smells like rosewater, where the rules of medicine dissolve into moonlit pageantry.

🩸 A Lyric of the Flesh Rewritten
Whispered from within gauze and rebellion, blending Judith Butler with Vogue magazine, making a tiara out of trauma, and sashaying toward the divine.

🖋️ A Found Poem
Pieced together from leaked hospital memos, janitor testimony, glitter-stained clinic notes, Instagram captions and coded diagnoses: Patient presents with fabulous.

Trailing glitter and ellipses... or loop back to the beginning, because no metamorphosis ever really ends.
brandon nagley May 2015
Absurd accumulations, broad- cloth's to wipe each bays station! What a joke of clownery tools.Irritated refuge, instigated neices and nephews miss their woeful father's.... One for a count, a whole cell to a slaughter.
Down and out lane I make mine way to your lonesome hell, where ankh arched wells draw back from higher hills..Robust outbreak of plentiful disease, orthopedics outclass your sneeze!!!!
Ovation applauded to ******* alike!!! Ordaters to outvoted daters, silence is thy key to your miserable life!!!!
Pasturage for slobs, corn for all cobs, your colonels panel design twists slow around the vine!!!!
Seconds until six, ten minutes until nine....... Will you behave like the boy you should be?
Or could have been?,
Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease
Other names Charcot–Marie–Tooth neuropathy, peroneal muscular atrophy, Dejerine-Sottas syndrome

The foot of a person with Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease: The lack of muscle, a high arch, and claw toes are signs of this genetic disease.
Pronunciation
[ʃaʁko maʁi tuːθ]
Specialty Neurology, podiatry, orthopedics, physical medicine and rehabilitation
Symptoms Foot drop, hammertoe, peripheral muscle wasting of lower legs and lower arm/hands
Usual onset Childhood – early adulthood
Duration Lifelong
Causes Family history (genetics)
Risk factors Family history (genetics), high-arched feet, flat-arched feet
Diagnostic method Genetic testing, nerve conduction study or electromyogram (EMG)
Differential diagnosis Muscular dystrophy
Treatment Management to maintain function
Prognosis Progressive
Frequency Prevalence: 1 in 2,500[1][2]
Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT) is a hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy of the peripheral nervous system characterized by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body. This disease is the most commonly inherited neurological disorder, affecting about one in 2,500 people.[3][4] It is named after those who classically described it: the Frenchman Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), his pupil Pierre Marie (1853–1940),[5] and the Briton Howard Henry Tooth (1856–1925).[6][7]

There is no known cure. Care focuses on maintaining function. CMT was previously classified as a subtype of muscular dystrophy.[3]

Signs and symptoms
Symptoms of CMT usually begin in early childhood or early adulthood but can begin later. Some people do not experience symptoms until their early 30s or 40s. Usually, the initial symptom is foot drop or high arches early in the course of the disease. This can be accompanied by hammertoe, where the toes are always curled. Wasting atrophy of muscle tissue of the lower parts of the legs may give rise to a "stork leg" or "inverted champagne bottle" appearance. Weakness in the hands and forearms occurs in many people as the disease progresses.[8]

High-arched feet (pes cavus) or flat-arched feet (pes planus) are classically associated with the disorder.[9] Loss of touch sensation in the feet, ankles, and legs as well as in the hands, wrists, and arms occurs with various types of the disease. Early- and late-onset forms occur with 'on and off' painful spasmodic muscular contractions that can be disabling when the disease activates. Sensory and proprioceptive nerves in the hands and feet are often damaged, while unmyelinated pain nerves are left intact. Overuse of an affected hand or limb can activate symptoms including numbness, spasm, and painful cramping.[8]

Symptoms and progression of the disease can vary. Involuntary grinding of teeth and squinting are prevalent and often go unnoticed by the person affected. Breathing can be affected in some, as can hearing, vision, and neck and shoulder muscles. Scoliosis is common, causing hunching and loss of height. Hip sockets can be malformed. Gastrointestinal problems can be part of CMT,[10][11] as can difficulty chewing, swallowing, and speaking (due to atrophy of vocal cords).[12] A tremor can develop as muscles waste. Pregnancy has been known to exacerbate CMT, as well as severe emotional stress. Patients with CMT must avoid periods of prolonged immobility such as when recovering from a secondary injury, as prolonged periods of limited mobility can drastically accelerate symptoms of CMT.[13]

Pain due to postural changes, skeletal deformations, muscle fatigue, and cramping is fairly common in people with CMT. It can be mitigated or treated by physical therapies, surgeries, and corrective or assistive devices. Analgesic medications may also be needed if other therapies do not provide relief from pain.[14] Neuropathic pain is often a symptom of CMT, though, like other symptoms of CMT, its presence and severity vary from case to case. For some people, pain can be significant to severe and interfere with daily life activities. However, pain is not experienced by all people with CMT. When neuropathic pain is present as a symptom of CMT, it is comparable to that seen in other peripheral neuropathies, as well as postherpetic neuralgia and complex regional pain syndrome, among other diseases.[15]

Atypical presentations of CMT can also lead to leg muscles, specifically the calves, enlarging.[16] This hypertrophic type of CMT is not caused by the muscles enlarging directly, but by pseudohypertrophy of the legs as fatty tissue enters the leg muscles.[17][18][19]

Causes

Chromosome 17
Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease is caused by genetic mutations that cause defects in neuronal proteins. Nerve signals are conducted by an axon with a myelin sheath wrapped around it. Most mutations in CMT affect the myelin sheath, but some affect the axon.[20]
Cedric McClester May 2020
By: Cedric McClester

We know that he’s a hater,
But is he merely,
Our president,
Or is he a dictator?
It depends on which one
He considers greater
We see his type quite frequently
Down, below the equator

He’s now come down on
Social media,
With an executive order,
As we witness his term in office
Growing shorter and shorter
He doesn’t believe that anyone
Should have the right to check him
But we certainly have the right, not to reelect him

If we didn’t have a Constitution,
He’d rule with an iron fist
Which is what the founding fathers
Encouraged us to resist
We broke away from the King
Not just to elect a despot
But that notwithstanding anyway
That seems what we have got

His gives out executive orders
Like others give out edicts
Unsteadily on his feet
In need of new orthopedics
But be that as it may
It’s just a matter of time
Before we change the guard
And find a brand new paradigm













Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved.

— The End —