Editors Susan Thames, Marin Gazzaniga, and Heather Ramsdell have assembled an anthology of prose and poetry that aims to expand our notions of the breast.
Returning from his stroll, Palomar again passes that bather, and this time he keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, so that his gaze touches with impartial uniformity the foam of the retreating waves, the boats pulled up on the shore, the great bath towel spread out on the sand, the swelling moon of the lighter skin with the dark halo of the nipple, the outline of the coast in the haze, the gray against the sky.
~From Italo Calvino’s “Mr. Palomar”
Every morning at nine o’clock I get my tits fried. Just one, actually. The right one. When I’m done I’m going to have a radiation barbecue.
~From Karen De Balbian Verster’s “Tabula Rasa”
Right to breast feed. Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, a mother may breast feed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother’s breast is covered during or incidental to the breast feeding.
~From New York State Law: §79-E
She conceals her breasts / like a spoon in the drawer the silver / sob stops
~From Erika Mailman’s “The Bones of Evening”
I can do it in my sleep: middle finger on the xiphoid process, first finger laid next to it. Sweep the opposite palm, as if giving a sacrament. Lay it down, beside the fingers, vertically between the breasts. Spread the fingers, drooping almost, nearly touching one nipple. The bring the other hand over, interlace the fingers. Upon the knees, an awkward genuflection, and counting, one two three, one two three.
~From Caroline M. B. Paul’s “Threshold”
Click here for a review of The Breast in Publisher’s Weekly.
