it's hard to picture
those clean, stocky women with
short brown hair
naked in bed, belly swollen
criss-crossing purple veins
screaming in birth, legs spread
bowels loosing over paper sheets
as the head breaks through
it's hard to picture them
reaching out to hold something
as messy and sticky was a newborn infant
while the doctor coaxes out afterbirth
closes incision with thread
it's hard to picture them
being anything but professional
detached from a world of sweat
and saliva and animal sex
to think of them as earthy, woman,
human