Surgery, A Little History Wendy Barker (bio) Stunned by the god's "feathered glory," Yeats said of Leda. How many painters have rendered this image, of a woman swooning with a swan. The trickery,the deceit of Zeus, disguising himself. And these doctors, their downy reassurance. Robotic surgery, they coo, easy as slipping into and out of a pond. Notgods, but white-coated, so feathery-voiced I believe them, sign the forms. Their sleek offices, paintings of lakes, of cool streams on their walls. Suchcalming waters I lie back, feet propped in the metal stirrups, till the speculum is pressed inside, probing for what lies underneath: stems of water lilies, smallfish. Scraping the silt. No "sudden blow," the surgeons promise, "minimally invasive, laparoscopic, tiny incisions, needle-thin instruments. Nothing to fear,"they stress. But photos I've now seen online show massive silvery cones, spiked bills that angle like spears toward the bull's-eye of a belly. "Indifferent"beaks that peck around inside, pulling sagging organs upright, shoving them into new places, wrapping them in mesh like the webs between toesof swans. "A month," they said. But it's more like ten before my body's mine again, works again, though I'm told I'm a lucky one, patients half my agemay need a catheter for a year, even two, "post-op," and often, they add, women will need the surgery redone. We say we're "put under" an [End Page 43] anesthetic. And how I've gone under, sunk down into the murk to remember the time during eighth grade when my mother picked me up, surprisingme after school, my gray Samsonite packed in the Ford's back seat: "We're going to the hospital, honey, just a little operation, so you won't have thoseawful cramps anymore." After the nurse stripped me and tied me into a blue robe that left my bottom bare, she told my mother to leave. They swooped in then,medical students, checking for cancer, they said, and pulled aside the gown, fingered my breasts. In the morning, the nurse wheeled medown the hall for the little operation. The doctor and his white-jacketed flock were waiting, thought the anesthetic had kicked in. I was awake all duringtheir hooting, their laughing. Spread-eagled in the stirrups, the clamp inside, the scraping. No Yeatsian "white rush." The blood that followed. Mymother never knew. Shortly before she died, she told me how, the first year she was married, her doctor insisted she come to the officeSaturday morning. Got her on her back, fiddled with her clitoris, diddled her, his fingers pulsing inside her, experimenting, to make her come. The sameob/gyn who delivered me, who believed women should suffer in childbirth, no need for an anesthetic while he rammed those forceps deepinside to haul me out. The body holds these incisions. For years. And genetic memory exists: we carry molecular scars. No eggs from suchvisitations. Only hard-boiled knowledge that you won't get the truth from these hook-scissored beaks when what they do is tear, ripinto you, and maybe, maybe, you'll recover, put on new knowledge with your own power. Flap back at them, beat your own wings against them. And snap. [End Page 44] Wendy Barker Wendy Barker's sixth collection, One Blackbird at a Time: The Teaching Poems, has been chosen for the John Ciardi Prize and was published by BkMk Press in fall 2015. Her fourth chapbook, From the Moon, Earth is Blue, was also published in fall 2015 by Wings Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2013. Recipient of nea and Rockefeller fellowships, she teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press
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Dec 1, 2022
Philip Ball 
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