Patrick Phillips, a finalist in Narrative’s Fifth Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of three poetry collections, Chattahoochee; Boy; and Elegy with a Broken Machine (Knopf, 2015), as well as a volume of translations, When We Leave Each Other: Selected Poems of Henrik Nordbrandt (2013). He received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. A graduate of Tufts University, Phillips received an MFA from the University of Maryland and a PhD from New York University. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Drew University.

Three Poems

by Patrick Phillips

An Hour Out of Surgery

my father blinks
like no one in my life


I’ve ever seen.
The night nurse comes


and takes his pulse
and signs the chart,


her pink nails leaving
little jaundiced
People on couch
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