I'm going to read from my second book, Natural Birth.
I'm going to read the birth section.
So you'll miss pregnancy, you'll miss labor.
What can I tell you?
Lucky ducks.
Yeah, you get to the birth, the good part.
In the '60s, you could read a book called Thank You,
Dr. Lamaze, and you could read a book called Natural Birth.
And they told you how you could now have
a baby without pain or drugs.
Do you remember that?
[LAUGHS]
And I thought, what a great thing?
My mother told me many times how she almost died.
And all the women had almost died.
And I thought, well, they only died because they were afraid.
They didn't do all these breathing techniques
and whatever.
So I did my breathing and my exercises,
and it hurt like hell.
[LAUGHTER]
But it'll probably be great for you.
If you haven't done this yet, no problem.
No problem.
[LAUGHS] But anyway, delivery, really, it really
happened for me that in delivery, I
did have a painless delivery.
OK, I don't know why.
But anyway, this is the delivery section.
"I was in the delivery room.
Put your feet up in the stirrups.
I put them up, obedient, still humble,
though the spirit was growing larger in me.
That Black woman was in my throat, her thin song
high-pitched like a lark, and all the muscles
were starting to constrict around her.
I tried to push just a little.
It didn't hurt.
I tried a little more.
Roll up, Guzzo said.
He wanted to give me a spinal.
No, I don't want a spinal.
Same doctor, his axe handle up my butt same as shaft or split
wood, Dr. Spike driving the head home,
where my soft animal cowed and prayed and cried
for his mother.
Or was the baby part of this whole damn conspiracy?
In on it with Guzzo, the two of them
wanting to shoot the wood up me for nothing, for playing music
to him in the dark, for singing to my round,
clasped belly, for filling up with pizza on a cold night,
dough warm?
Maybe he wanted out.
Was saying, give her a needle and let me
the hell out of here.
Who cares what she wants?
Put her to sleep.
My baby pushing off with his Black feet from the dark shore,
heading out not knowing which way
and trusting odorless and eyeless, so hopeless
it didn't matter.
No, not my baby, this loved thing in and of myself.
So I balled up and let him try to stick it in.
Maybe something was wrong.
Roll up, he said, roll up.
But I don't want it.
Roll up, roll up.
But it doesn't hurt.
We all stood nurses around the white light, hands
hanging empty at our sides.
Roll up in a ball.
All of us not knowing how or if in such a world
without false promises, we could say anything
but yes, yes, come take it and be quick.
I put my belly in my hand, gave him that thin side of my back,
the bones intruding on the air in little knobs and joints.
He might crack down my spine.
His knuckles rap, each twisted symmetry.
Put me on the rack, each nerve bright
and stretched like canvas.
He couldn't get it in.
Three times he tried.
Roll up, he cried, roll up.
Three times he couldn't get it in.
Dr. White, the head obstetrician came in.
What are you doing, Guzzo?
I thought she wanted natural.
To me, do you what a shot?
No.
Well, put your legs up, girl, and push.
And suddenly, the light went out, the nurses laughed,
and nothing mattered in this 10:00 AM sunshiny morning.
We were well, the nurses and the doctors cheering,
that girl combing hair all in one direction,
shining bright as water.
I grew deep in me like fist, and I grew deep in me like death,
and I grew deep in me like hiding in the sea.
And I was over me like sun, and I was under me like sky.
And I could look into myself like one dark eye.
I was her, and she was me, and we
were scattered round like light, nurses, doctors cheering.
Such waves.
My face contorted.
Never wore such mask, so rigid and so dark.
So bright, uncompromising, brave, no turning back,
no no's, I was so beautiful.
I could look up in the light and see
my hugeness arc, electric, heavy, fleshy living light.
No wonder they praised me, a gesture one
makes helpless and urgent, praising what
goes on without our praise.
When there was nowhere I could go,
when I was so deep in myself, so large, I had to let it out.
They said, drop back.
I dropped back on the table, panting.
They moved the head, swiveled it correctly, but I was losing.
Heard something ahead coming through the door.
Name, please.
Please, name.
Whose head?
I don't know, some disconnection.
Name, please?
And I am not ready.
The sudden visibility, his body, his curly wet hair,
his arms abandoned in the air, his skin must be so cold,
but there is nothing I can do to warm him.
His body clutches in a wretched way.
They expect me to sing joy, joy, a son is born, child is given,
my tongue curled in my head, my tears, cheeks
stringy with damp hair.
This lump of flesh, lump of steamy viscera,
who is this child?
A child never having been seen before without credentials,
credit cards, without employee reference, or high school
grades, or anything to make him human make him mine,
but skin of pain to chop off at the navel.
While they could, they held him down and chopped him,
held him up, my little fish.
My blueness, swallowed in the air,
turned pink and wailed, no more.
Enough.
I looked.
I lay there speechless, looking for something to say to myself.
After you have touched the brain, that squirmy lust
of maggots, after you have pumped the heart, that thief,
that comic, they throw you in the trash.
And the little one in the case of glass, he is not I,
I am not him.
He is not I. A stranger.
Blue air protects us from each other.
Here is the note he brings.
It says, mother.
But I do not even know this man."
[CLAPPING]
[WHISTLE]
Oh, that's wonderful.
I have never heard anybody whistle
at a reading in my life.
I will never forget that.
I don't know who did it.
I will never forget it.
Thank you.
I really appreciate that.
I feel like I should [CHUCKLES] do it.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know.
[LAUGHS] I guess, poetry can be beautiful in that way,
the body of poetry.
Oh, thank you.