Voluptuousness rules begins this oval, oviparous, oracular poem about "whale women" lying around on cushions, practicing pushing the bodies of babies from their bodies into the body of the rest of the universe. Turkish music, undulant arms, bulging breasts, the rhythm of secrets, the beginning of being ready to give birth--this, my friends, is a succulent poem!
"Antenatal Class" ends not with the moralistic healthiness of the typical Lamaze class, but with the body breathing, "tasting, hearing, through armpits, hair / and speaking softly oh oh oh / in letters it shapes with its pelvis." [22 lines]
The poem takes place in a respiratory ward of a children's hospital, where the narrator hears "a children's wind ensemble / hooting through the weary nocturne." One mother is massaging her child's back, "working calm's liniment between shoulder blades / scarcely bigger than chicken wings."
The narrator appears to be a friend or relative, who silently tries to breathe for the breathless child, whose panic is held in check by "his mother's dulcet voice." It seems like everything will be all right "as long as the hand strokes, and while the voice croons . . . " [30 lines]
When at last the authorities came / to lead away her children, she turns around and retreats "inward to the recesses of her mind." This woman doesn't care what happens to the children because she has lived in her own world for a long time, but nobody noticed. The neighbors saw her trash stack up, they smelled "the stench of fetid scraps" in her house, but they continued along their merry way, oblivious to what was happening. [30 lines]
