Those who don’t exist by Sam Szanto (United Kingdom, 44)

Yesterday the woman called a hotline, asked for Jane and talked long
as the making and baking of bread, today as the sun prods knives
in her face she invisibles past cherry tree sentries, avoiding
the rollerskating child and young girl toiling with a pram,
trembling her hand

against an unmarked door, she is supported down chattering steps
to a cellar, where they blindfold her so she can’t bear witness
to those who don’t exist yet will do what she’s chosen;
the hands of a school teacher gentle her to a bed
and she gasps at the speculum and cold paste,

hands consoling hers the whole time, at the end the woman
hands over all she can, more than they’d asked for,
as she staggers up there are shouts and crashes,
the house penetrated by blankly angry men,
the woman strips off her blindfold, body

cramping, the Janes swallow cards imprinted with names
and addresses, she is seized, handcuffed and thrust
into a car, at the station she sheds clotted blood;
nobody chooses to hand over information,
the woman is released.

The  Jane Collective was an underground network of amateur female abortion providers that
launched in Chicago in 1965.



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Sam Szanto lives in Durham, UK. Her collaborative, prize-winning poetry pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’ will be published by Hedgehog Press in July 2023. In 2023, she has had poems in ‘BODY literary journal', ‘Stark Nights’ and ‘The Lake’, and shortlisted for the Chesham Literary Prize. In previous years, she has been published in international journals including 'The North'. She won the 2020 Charroux Poetry Prize and Twelfth First Writer International Poetry Prize. Twitter: sam_szanto. Website: samszanto.com