BIRTH THREATENS CLOSER—Poems by Samantha Barrow
“Flooding” by Tony Alter
BIRTH THREATENS CLOSER
The water level rises
under my skin
Swollen
Bloated
—logical terms
to capture
this state
but really
the body
subconscious
is beginning
its drowning
of a social GPS
adherence to a map
other than the deep interior machinery core
set in motion by a callous gesture, a couple little cells
that ignited everything god-like and terrifying
the territory beneath my eyes
—spongy soft & pale—
brims in heat
once the flood line laps
my irises
I’m done
Just hope to hold on
to enough breath
to make it
past this
Origin
to the other
surface
“Birth” by Priya Saihgal
FACING
The fact is
you have to finish this
There is no undoing
the hole that will be made
There is no turning the honeydew melon
back into a grape or a pomegranate pip
to slip gracefully through
your maidenhood
You are a matron now
skirts wide billowing
& worn
the only grace
available
is acceptance
Boo hoo if you want to
“Game Day”
OPENING
When my midwife
tries to get a second finger
inside my cervix
to stimulate
the baby’s coming
it feels like I am
being raped
There is nothing I can do
about that fact
She can pull open
my labial lips
knock the baby’s head around my pelvic bowl
I can consent to those pains
necessary I can suppose
but somewhere
between the vaginal canal
and the inside of my bones
a new law emerges
where my body is not
my own
a slimy furred
fanged
beast
with tits & wings
in all the wrong places
will gnaw your fucking head off
Don’t ask me
to be reasonable
Don’t ask me to endure
that which will not save
my life
our life
A death
of something
will occur
“Wings” by Kirsten Pauli
P.S. Want more? There’s more. Samantha Barrow will be reading at Dixon Place for the Queer Art Organics series on Tuesday Nov 8th
Photos (except of the author) are Flickr / Creative Commons License
About the Author
Samantha Barrow writes poems and some prose while directing the Humanities in Medicine at the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at The City College of New York, and teaching in the Program of Narrative Medicine at Columbia.
She is the author of GRIT and tender membrane (Plan B Press), Jelly (a chapbook, Tiger / Monkey Alliance), and Chap (self published). Her poetry, prose, reviews and interviews have been published in The Ledge Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia City Paper, Off Our Backs, Lesbian Nation, Feminist Review, The Intima, Cleaver, Helmet Hair and two Uphook Press Anthologies: “you say. say.” and “Hell Strung and Crooked.
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