The Literature of Birth
for Jane & Alice

In the delivery room
relentless verbs push red
the fleshy vocabulary stretches
toward its new-found paradigm.
Hard adjectives and adverbs flow
no heed for punctuation as past participles
dangle on her final exclamation mark.
There is a pregnant pause before
the difficult transition can be made.
And then a white anthology of pro’s
holds up this pink
unblemished pronoun to the world.

And in the night
when all the nouns—both relative
and much-loved masculine have gone,
soft clause and whispered phrase secure
each paragraph to paragraph,
an urgency of lip and gum
on giving nipples grip, become
their narrative; their literature.

About the Poet
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Gary Smith teaches creative writing at Box Hill and Holmesglen TAFE colleges and the CAE. He has had many poems and prose pieces published in national literary journals and magazines and his work has been performed live on several Melbourne and regional radio stations. Gary has been Poet-in-Residence for the CAE Summer Festival of Writing, has also had feature articles published in The Big Issue, was an editor for Verandah literary journal (Deakin University) in 1997 and is a past Secretary of Melbourne Poets Union.

Email: smithy@bigpond.net.au