National Poetry Month: Mathias Svalina

I Give Birth to a Shadow

for Pastor Lee I give birth to a shadow & my wife gives birth to a Bible & my wife’s wife gives birth to a handful of rusted nails, & my wife’s wife’s husband gives birth to a waterslide, & my wife’s wife’s husband’s husband gives birth to the state of Tennessee, & it goes on like this, it goes on & on & on, the whole composited world birthed by somebody’s wife, who is somebody’s husband, who is somebody’s wife’s husband‘s husband, & so on & on & on. I think we might last until the morning. I think the distant rumbling might not be the approaching armies, might be a new waterfall just birthed into being. So let’s collect our birthed things, no matter how small or useless, & store them on museum shelves. Every thing is precious to someone, even the army had a mommy & a daddy. If I were to kiss you, right now, right here, even though I am already dead & forgotten by the world of things, I hope you would, in that moment of our kiss, give birth to something someone else might one day, lovingly, destroy.

Author photograph by Dean Davis

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Mathias Svalina is the author of eight books, most recently Thank You Terror (Big Lucks, 2024), & he runs a dream delivery service.

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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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