SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Seven
JAL NICHOLL
The Midwife
Then I was standing in a place
So flat it gave me vertigo. A woman
Met me, powerful bodied, blocking out
The sun that weakly pulsed through the aerial half
Of that doubled marshland
And in a voice deeper than the Kora Bore Hole
And with a hand that nearly broke my own
She led me to a lake swollen like an eye
And reaching into the jelly, plucked out
One by one dripping abortions
Nervous systems incomplete, limbs
Odd-numbered, and, purring
Like an idling eighteen-wheeler
Said over and again, "Remember the time..."
With what seemed an unironic smile
Of congratulation
And when that was over
And to be sure, it felt like years—she wrapped me
Up in her arms and held me, tight, so tight
To her stretch marks of quartz
Jal Nicholl lives in Victoria, Australia. His poems have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Cordite, E.ratio, Otoliths, etc.
