Birthing Woman as Viscera-Sucker
text in italics from “The Viscera-Sucker and the Politics of Gender” by Herminia Meñez
In preparation for his arrival
I made my den:
candles,
bergamot-doused humidifier,
coconut water,
contraction timer.
By day, the viscera-sucker
appears
an exceptionally attractive woman
with long hair fuller and richer
from the hormones that infused my body
the creature clung to sac,
placenta,
umbilical cord.
By night, she discards her lower torso, hiding it
under the sheets, in a closet, or among a patch
of banana trees. Day eleven after due date:
the hilot who evicted overstaying children
speared needles and enerhiya into my shoulders,
initiating his departure.
Another hilot swept membranes,
commenced a stirring.
*
*
*
Triad of healers prepared massage
looped a malong to stretch my back
sang songs to dance the child down
sprinkling holy water, burning incense
contractions
were violent,
bursting from the inside
displaying blessed palms,
doula did not arrive
the crucifix, and praying
are believed to paralyze a witch.
blood pooled out of me,
maxi-pad soaked in red.
To capture a viscera-sucker,
GO! I emitted.
one should cast a priest’s cincture
or belt around her body
to make her
At the hospital, I arrived
powerless.
a tortured, writhing beast
doctors and nurses in gowns and gloves
probed
connected
draped
monitored
injected.
A hand, my hand
signed papers shoved at it.
Papers
quivered off the narrow bed like leaves
blown by a supernatural wind.
Birth plans
prayers
blueprints
abandoned.
They wringed their hands and wheeled me into the fluorescent chamber.
If someone rubs ashes, salt, vinegar, lemon juice,
garlic, ginger, pepper, and other spices on her
discarded part, reattachment is impossible
Sliced in two, I parted
for his removal
and the viscera-sucker dies fragmented.
Copyright © 2024 by Aimee Suzara. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem emerges from the mythical-scale experience of birthing my child. Aside from a literal brush with death, there’s the figurative: the old self giving way to the new one, which is now dual——two hearts beating in one body. Then comes the first of several separations. My C-section was both traumatic and magical. I wanted to spin on the myth of the ‘viscera sucker,’ the manananggal, a mythical female creature believed to suck fetuses from pregnant women’s wombs. Her name derives from tanggal, which means ‘removed.’ Birth is a kind of splitting: postpartum, a return to the self in its new form.”
—Aimee Suzara
Aimee Suzara
Aimee Suzara is a Filipina American poet, playwright, performer, and educator whose mission is to create poetic and theatrical work about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change. The author of Souvenir (WordTech Editions, 2014), which was a Willa Award Finalist in 2015, she lives in Oakland, California.