Summary

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth begins not with a poem, but with a single italicized line on an otherwise empty page. It sits in the center of the upper half of the page, and reads: "I have my mother's mouth and my father's eyes; on my face they are still together" (6). The collection then begins with the piece "What Your Mother Told You After Your Father Left." In this short poem, a mother tells her child that she did not beg the child's father to stay, because she instead focused on "begging God/ that he would not leave" (7).

"Your Mother's First Kiss" is written in the second person point of view, but focuses on the mother of the "you" who is referenced in the poem. The poem begins by stating that the mother learned later that the first boy she kissed...