The Jungian analyzes
my bladed braids and lipsticked lips.
What are you trying to prove?
He asks as I kill
our molly fish and sleep
at the morgue as punishment. Disembodied
sheets of centrifugal steel, I skate
onto your onanism. From the bathtub I watch
as holy rollers go catatonic
on the lawn again. The neighbourhood
beagle licks, sharper than
my icicle eyes that continue
to drip even when the temperature rises.
At night we cracked
crayons, tried to colour over blue
but we only made purple. Set fire
to the wasp nest and watched it burn
in the dark, theorizing about the
chemical composition of paper.
You learned a new language to say
I’m a walking-talking
contradiction.
That I hate waiting, like
change a little too much. Call me a hazard,
I’ll keep sanding between my thighs.
For now I know
what I am. I’m too tired for your idea of virtue,
too tired to line my eyes for you tonight.
Katherine Alexandra Harvey is the author of the novel, Quiet Time, and the poetry chapbook, Let Me Evaporate. Her work has appeared or is set to appear in Queen’s Quarterly, Room, CV2, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Grain, EXILE, Quill & Quire, Existere, Riddle Fence, and The Newfoundland Quarterly, among other publications. Harvey’s second novel, Green Eye Blue, is forthcoming.
