SurVision Magazine

Birth Story


I was watching myself give birth
in the dream as if it were a movie.
A man I knew talked and talked,

said breathe out before you push
instead of breathe before you push.
I knew how to do it right, but I listened to him.

I said her head is out.
I saw myself squatting
on a rock with her head crowning,

then the baby was placed
on the pine tree bough
I used to make mud pies under as a child.

She was covered in mud and balanced
like a leopard asleep.
I had no fear she'd fall.

Her lips turned first before her head
as infants do towards the breast
but there was only a branch.

She peeled its bark off
between her lips.
How did I push her out?

I found the power of my breath
but not until her life was at stake.
She would not emerge until my voice became fire.




Summer fog


cottons the eyes,
grays the green leaves.
The shrouded trees march.
A crow's diagonal flight
slices black across the vision
like shears through a bandage.
The gauze falls away.




Jessica Purdy is from New Hampshire, USA, and teaches Poetry Workshops at Southern New Hampshire University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her poems have appeared in The Wild Word, Bluestem Magazine, The Telephone Game, The Tower Journal, and The Cafe Review. Her chapbook, Learning the Names, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Her full-length collections, STARLAND  and Sleep in a Strange House, were brought out by Nixes Mate Books in 2017 and 2018.