Poetry

Published on April 30th, 2018 | by Samantha Barrow

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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

 

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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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