Doritt Carroll has one of those voices that will stop you in your tracks, with the unmistakable ring of truths we don’t always want to hear, but recognize immediately as an essential tonic.

i learned about dry shampoo when the nurses cleaned 
my father’s hair as he lay in the dead bed 

that we rented from the you-won’t-need-this-for-long- 
because-it’s-fatal company 

i also learned that the nails of the almost 
-dead grow and grow segmented and terrible 

until my father’s feet resembled the claws of a bear 
the metal bed a trap that had us all by the ankle 

   --excerpt, "medicare"