Seema Reza
This poem began in a workshop entitled “Wound Dwelling” led by herbalist and writer Jennifer Patterson. In first drafts, I tend toward writing from margin to margin. When I find myself needing line breaks to unearth the next line, I know it’s meant to be a poem. The image of walking the perimeter of a larger-than-life physical wound didn’t hold up in the final draft, but the narrator of the poem is doing just that: circling a wound that feels overwhelming, fearing violence and desiring intimacy. Belemnite is a word used to describe both an extinct cephalopod and its fossil. The organism and the embedded, frozen memory of the organism are one thing. This felt obscure and right for so naked a poem. In editing, I shifted to second person and, before I knew it, the explanation was less necessary. With the invocation of motherhood, of “women know,” the extra flesh fell away and it became what it is. It’s a terrifically uncomfortable poem to read aloud.
“Belemnite” is from A Constellation of Half-Lives (Write Bloody Publishing) and originally appeared in Hematopoiesis Magazine.
