The emotional capacity of poetry can be an apt partner with methodical science. Although algorithms, efficiency tools, and guidelines are essential for the safety of patients (and indemnify the conscientious investigators who use them), best medical practice demands sensitivity to patients’ perspectives, especially the challenges faced when seeking care. These can include complex feelings around diagnoses and treatments that are not always readily elicited or expressed. Poetry can convey such aspects of the patient experience that may be missed or go unspoken. “Phase I, Arms Crossed” first nods to this nuanced intricacy with the title’s entendre. For researchers, a crossover trial indicates an abstruse study design. However, cloaked in “quiet prayers” with protectively crossed arms, through poetry the speaker creates spiritual similes that express a yearning for healing of cancer during participation in a research study. This wish for redemption, “You hope the trial doesn’t know/how much you want to be chosen,” arises amid intersecting undertones of confessed guilt, depersonalizing laboratory draws, and superstition; that the speaker imagines the research study itself has agency and can somehow choose the eventual outcome ironically heightens a sense of powerlessness. The poetic melding of biological and supernatural infuses us all with a searing reminder that a new chemotherapy trial may mean something far more than data to participants vs researchers. For in poetry, lines of treatment chairs can seem like a church’s pews, “odorless” drugs become “almost holy,” and ID wristbands are talismans—while ultimately, statistically significant outcomes can become answered prayers.
