"You've probably heard that in some parts of the world, new moms eat their placentas, which are believed to provide a unique health boost... (T)he benefits of consuming placenta are said to include 'enhanced breast milk production and a reduction in the risk of post-natal depression.'"--Circle of Moms news item
a late lamented buddy used to call lesbians
ladies who ate their own mattresses
he thought it was the height of wit
& cuteness to call some friends that
but it seems science has caught on
with mama nature's ancient wisdom
it has been proven that
eating one's after-birth
pushes the flow of life-giving milk
& whitens the blues away
out here where clerics & their fanatic
followers interfere in
intimate relations between women & men
& condemn as dregs & discards
those who prefer an interfering church
out of their lives
out here where population boom booms va-vooms
while the economy stagnates despite experts'
claims that ours is an emergent,
no longer a developing, economy
out here where the constant calls of midwives
childbirth coaches progressive ob-gyns pediatricians
for breast is best are falling like
expired contraceptives by the wayside
battle-scarred crones like us
gift the mothers who come
after with lactation supplements
malunggay leaves malunggay powder malunggay tablets
increasingly our voices grow fainter
as we dispense advice
on how to massage breasts
to ease the flow of milk
we remind young mommies
breasts aren't for a partner's
or your self-pleasuring alone
ahhh, too late in the afternoon to ask
after two well-spaced births
where in heck did my after-births go
after they fell in a basin in an
antiseptic delivery room?
had i known what they could do
i could've asked a pharmacist
to save them grind them
into increasingly small but potent
happy pills for too many generations
growing glowing & at some point going
--Babeth Lolarga
Illustrations: Gustav Klimt's "Mother and Child" and Facebook pet page
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