Curated by Karolina Zapal The birthing room is a liminal space. It changes us in ways we imagined and never could have imagined. In the room where I gave birth, I hemorrhaged and a midwife dove elbow-deep into my…
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Jessica Barlevi [After the first child, I knew] After the first child, I knew. The prize at the end of the pregnancy is not the child. It is the stay. On the maternity ward. Where it is warm and…
Olivia Brochu When One Thing Ends We pull weeds. Grip their green leaves. Pry from their base. Hope to expunge their white, spiny roots. They reach out from their hosts like the fine and unruly postpartum hairs growing back…
Jennifer Case The Machinery Is In Order But We Are Still Fearful Jennifer Case is the author of The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World (forthcoming from Trinity University Press), We Are Animals: On…
Amy Dryansky Flowers That Bloom Early & Disappear They Call Ephemeral Witch hazel unfurls its ragged, yolk-yellow stars, ++++++& herons arrive, awkward bodies hunched astride their haphazard nests ++++++empty & silent for now, but soon— & robins return puffed…
Laura Foley A Trace of Smoke If I had a son who was forty-one and willing to listen, I’d call him on his birthday and say: I remember— the scent of wood smoke on a pale September morning, how…
Mary Fontana Delivered —an instant late we look where the gulls have gathered, shrieking, the shredded knot now drawing open, its center red and wet, the just-calved creature anonymous already, one more newborn on the seal-tiled beach: a stone heaved…
MR Sheffield 1-800-PREGNANT WOMAN i. we’re told pregnant women are greeting cards diffuse glow filtered lighting soft amber reality is lacework electrified nerve endings but don’t say that aloud images require careful curation a museum of pregnant ladies …
Therese Gleason Some Defining Moments in Several Instances of Conception, Gestation and Birth: A (Personal) History To conceive (verb) 1. become pregnant with (a child) The first time I got pregnant on the first try. It was almost mystical;…
Sian Maciejowski Where All Seas Are the Same I’m standing at the edge again. From inside me comes salt, a cry, a wingbeat too soft to name. There is no answer, only the return of morning. Two women hover…