In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 I was trying to type encyclopedia but kept typing envy when I got to the part where my son sprawled on the bed, asking what’s a placenta? So we went to the envy envy encyclopedia, so helpfully literal, so unopen to interpretation. I remembered my own, or his, sliding out numbly, how a nurse caught it in a bowl and was going to take it away, but I strained to sit up, to look. Building a placenta is hard work the body does without the mind—temporary organ, bound by the scope of its own necessity. It was yucky, I tell my son, sticking out my tongue. How big? he asks, and I say it was like a black brain— an anti-brain, lumpy pillow with a white amniotic fringe— painless, painless, that predictable end. after birth ...

Share