Spotlight: “Giraffe’s Midwife”

I wrote this graphic poem in a coffee shop in Spokane, Washington in the midst of my first book tour. I was overrun with anxiety, both about my future and about my daily survival as a queer femme traveling alone. One night, I had a dream in which I served as a giraffe’s midwife. I’m not much for dream interpretation, but when I woke up I felt I had experienced some poetic evidence that the future was not some dreamy, naive, perfection—it was eager to meet me, and I deserved to see it. “Giraffe’s Midwife” imagines a future in which I dare to be alive and wanted, a future in which things are not always beautiful but we are still here, and therefore it is a future that contains beauty.

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Shay Alexi is a poet, performance artist, and writer based out of Atlanta, GA. They are the author of Diary of a Ghost Girl (Glass Poetry Press, 2019), and their work has been featured by PANK, Tinderbox Poetry, and Grist, amongst others. They are a Pisces sun with a Pisces moon, and would like to remind you to drink your water. Catch up with Shay and read more of their work at www.shayalexipoetry.comwww.shayalexipoetry.com or on social media at @_shayalexi_.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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