Jessica Covil
Where to Begin
Where should one start, except at
where it hurts.
Here: place two fingers on my wrist
and listen, closely
through the skin.
Be careful not to take
your own heartbeat
for mine; that is
make sure that I’m alive, and then
search for the wounding.
Suppose you start
with the neck instead—
but the rest remains still.
What else is there to do
but press your fingers down,
lightly and listening
for my body to answer.
You, who are different from myself.
Do that bit, and then—
why, you’d search for the wounding still.
Why else come to my body
on the floor?
Aware by now that something
has happened here,
you must wonder, too,
how else to begin?
If not at the wound, and then
the wounding.
How else, you see—where,
why else
would you begin?
Jessica Covil‘s poems have appeared in SWWIM Every Day, Whale Road Review, and Rise Up Review. She is a third-year PhD student in English at Duke, pursuing certificates in African and African American studies and in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies.
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