Re-Birth: Poems
Expend
Motherhood shows up like liquid god in the veins
You see it
the faint reflection
shimmering on the surface
we call g l o w
go deep
It is nothing
short of The Power
of being The Creator
And you taste it
And then it drains out
one birthday at a time
Your little creatures
mess up your hair
smash your car
Watch your mouth!
Naw, instead they’ll razor up
your womb from the inside
with tongues only they know
‘cause they’ve been there
are of that meat
You have to kick them out
again & again
selfish parasite of chaos
eating abandon for lunch
You see that too
the faint reflection
draining on the surface
go deeper
A shimmer of shipwreck
a carcass
skin slowly sinking into grooves
of skeletal bones
Hormones deplete.
What new drug will suck life
into these hollow
veins and eye sockets
now?
Re-Birth
There is no porn about hemorrhoids
I checked
There is scat galore
golden showers
amputee stump-fucking
rape-a-rampant
race on display like exotic love/slave flower vixen
But the little to large
bumpy nodules
hang below the radar of both
subversion and scripted
worse than whipped
they are ignored
We all just want them to go away
quietly
But they linger
like children
like fatigue
How am I supposed to get my mojo back?
Surgery?
Really?
After all that
Avoidance of needles and knives?
No amnio No Pitocin
THIS will be my intervention downfall?
To connect me to old-school lava junky vaginal me?
I’ll shove this birthing badge of honor right back up my ass?
Will I silence the vengeful song of the jealous smaller canal
with the less glamorous expulsions?
And a little placenta-print jealousy?
No little asshole,
I’ll rub you with homeopathetic oils
over-priced & from France
I’ll attempt to exercise and release
undo a lifetime of caffeine and clenching
I’ve always excelled at the eccentric
worship of wounds
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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