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Pregnancy and Childbirth
Poetry
First Breath Last Breath
When a baby boy is born / and the midwife / holds him up / as he takes / his first breath, / Place him over / the Mother’s face / so when the baby exhales / his first breath on Earth / the Mother breathes it.
December 2006
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Brahmic Egg
For eleven weeks I threw up in the late afternoons. I shivered and broke out in sweats, grew bloated and round in the cheeks. My breasts felt tender. My tongue swam in my mouth. I ate grapefruit and soft-boiled eggs, loosened my waistband, fell asleep on the floor under my desk.
October 2006
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Ways To Show Affection
The heat isn’t working in the clinic waiting room. A bronze bust of Margaret Sanger, patron saint of birth control, scrutinizes me from a plaster podium, and a slide show, Ways to Show Affection without Intercourse, is projected half on a pull-down screen and half on the cottage-cheese ceiling.
May 2006
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Narrow Door
After I graduated from college, I worked as a prep aide at a large hospital. The prep aide was the person who went around each night and shaved patients for their surgery in the morning.
November 2005
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Trying
Recently samples of baby products — diapers, formula, wipes — have begun showing up in my mail. Packets of coupons with smiling infants on them arrive in envelopes that say, “Congratulations!” in big red letters.
October 2005
Readers Write
Taking A Stand
Facing a flock of cowards wearing sheets, caring for a parent, making a new friend
September 2005
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Night Of Falling Alone
“Son, will you come downstairs, please.” He has pulled a chair up to the couch in the living room. We never use this room. The Christmas tree is placed in here each year. I would read in here as a child. That’s it. I sit on the couch and sink down. He sits straight up in the chair, his graying black hair combed back. His eyes soften. Like the sails on a boat, they offer a telltale sign of which way the wind is blowing and how strong. This afternoon, in the fading light of day, they tell me he is tired.
December 2003
Photography
Photographs by John Milisenda
I have been photographing my family for more than thirty years. The pictures here are of my mother, Rose, and my younger brother, Dennis. My father, Sal, died in 1991.
May 2001
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