The Caesarean
A poem by Sam Szanto

The Caesarean

The woman’s body,
white as the walls,
is laid upon the operating table
a choir of masks above her
her husband’s face among them,
her flesh screened off to conceal
the multiplication and division
of woman into mother
and daughter
into mother and
mother into daughter.

After the anaesthetic
she is still as milk.

The room is cool,
a radio plays, one of the masks is singing
as he does something inside her.
She is a cut-out paper doll
who feels nothing.

She thinks
maybe they will take my body
and leave my head
to be presented on a plate.
This was your mother.

She keeps her mouth closed.
The nurses are not there for her.

It is over, she is told,
her insides back in.

Like a cut-out tongue placed into a mouth
her baby is put into her arms.

About the Author:

Sam Szanto lives in Durham, UK. Her poetry pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’ was published by Hedgehog Press and is a Poetry Book Society Winter 2023 Choice. Her pamphlet ‘This Was Your Mother’ won the 2023 Dreich Slims Contest and will be published in 2024. She won the Charroux Poetry Prize and the First Writer International Poetry Prize, and her poetry has been placed in journals including ‘Northern Gravy’ and ‘The North’.

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