The speaker passes along what "nana" told her: a family history of women who had children without waiting to feel ready or secure. Nana says that if she had waited until she could afford kids, she never would have had any, and the same was true of her mother and grandmothers. Each story that follows shows a woman scrambling to keep a family fed. One takes whatever work she can find after the mills close, then trains as a nurse and spends her nights washing bodies. Another takes in more foster children until the subsidies can cover everyone.
The speaker's tone is quiet and respectful, close to awe. The repeated "nana said" makes the poem feel like oral storytelling, handed down across generations. The title's pun is the key: these women's "bodies of work" are both their tiring physical labor and the children they raised. The mood is plain, steady, and proud, with no self-pity, just a clear sense of what these women endured.