Samantha Strong Murphey
thaw
the first thing she did was math / the baby will be born with the magnolia blooms / the chicks / the
thaw of her last decade / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother / in the spring / she sat in the
bathtub at 5 a.m. listening to the thunder / contractions strong enough to keep her awake / she’d
trained her mind / proofed her house / lived on poetry / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother
in a storm / they walked all day in malls / dodging puddles in parking lots / watched TV all evening
timing contractions / hypno-knuckling / and at midnight / they made the call and put the bags in
the car / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother / in the night / seven hours passed in the
darkness as she labored / in a chair on a bed a ball her knees moving rocking sitting standing
humming bending groaning doubting / she inhaled / and she exhaled / and she cried / dry tears /and
he tried to help / but he couldn’t / so he counted very slowly / and she listened through the pain /
pain without progress as the daylight dialed louder / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother /
in one piece / she held him by the wrist as they put the needle in her back / felt shivers in her feet
as her legs went numb / laid back and cried / wet tears / because for the first time in nine months
she remembered you were coming / and felt calm enough / to love you so she loved you / and the
love swallowed up the regret / and her body relaxed and her body progressed / and she watched
your heartbeat on the monitor in the dewy daylight / and for six more hours the nurse came / and
went / and she cried / fat tears / and knew you were getting closer / and she liked the idea of
becoming / a mother
Magic
Cannibal burn, I devoured
myself, screamed I can’t when I
already was. Somewhere in the hospital room,
a flight attendant on an intercom calmly
announced that the world was now inverted—
zeros were infinities, love was hate and hate
was love. My begging for death was a sign
of good progress. I was rabid and caged in the belly
of a cargo plane, chewing through ice chips
instead of my hands.
The miracle of your birth was its disappearing.
Pain is supposed to linger
on the tastebuds, cling to the bones.
But this—it consumed me into the lamplight
then vanished, a Parisian pickpocket into crowded
tunnel, a curtain dropped, whipped away
just before I’m sawed in two, white hot
blistering fission, and then
the sun just went and
slipped behind a cloud.
Samantha Strong Murphey has an MFA in poetry from NYU and has been supported by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center. She teaches writing at UT-Dallas. Her work has been published by Rattle, Crab Creek Review, and North American Review and is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, RADAR, SWWIM and elsewhere. Her manuscript, “Bad Prophet,” was a finalist for the Trio Award from Trio House Press. (Photo credit Justin Hackworth).