The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 7/12/08 (warning: graphic language)

[BlueIris]

"The Country Midwife: A Day"

I bend over the woman.
This is the third time between abortions.
I dip a towel into a bucket of hot water
and catch the first bit of blood,
as the blue-pink dome of a head breaks through.
A scraggy red child comes out of her into my hands
like warehouse ice sliding down the chute.

It's done, the stink of birth, Old Grizzly
rears up on his hind legs in front of me
and I want to go outside,
but the air smells the same there, too.
The woman's left eye twitches
and beneath her, a stain as orange as sunrise
spreads over the sheet.
I lift my short, blunt fingers to my face
and I let her bleed, Lord, I let her bleed.

—Ai

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear BlueIris!

Wow, this is a tough one...

Is she letting the woman die?

You weren't kidding when you said this month's poems would be reality-based!

Thank you!

:hi:

[BlueIris]

2. The next week is harsh.

I want to make sure I get all the poems I've wanted to share with DU out there. I have a backlog of like ten or fifteen pieces that I'm going to put up, while I still can. Some of them are pretty dark.

[BlueIris]

3. Kick.

[BlueIris]

4. Kick.

[ThomCat]

5. There is a deep sense of desperation in this.

It's wonderfully emotional, but deliberately unpleasant.

The woman giving birth isn't really described as a person, and I think that the midwife doesn't really like her.

There are parts of this that I don't think I really understand yet. The author means more than I'm getting. I'm going to think about this one and then re-read it later a few times.

[BlueIris]

6. "(D)eliberately unpleasant" is a good way to describe this one. nt