Issue 4: Echoes

Femme poem 9: borderline

Claudia Kindrachuk

your glance askance
at my heeled boots and lined eyes
tells me that tonight, i am
electric fence. you read:
border. you read: threat.

tonight, i fell head over heels
for carved wood and stained glass.
i came home sick with
bottled desire, furious
at profit’s injustice. like a forest
warrior i’d chain myself
to this art, my body
a protest.

tonight, i saw hands creep
from crevices, skirts swish
around corners in periphery;
the house unfolded
herself as must-coloured
pages of maids, merfolk,
and heroines, white light
thru roseate glass
beseeching me:

excavate girlhood romance.
save whatever you can.

tonight, i am
what i always was:
the line that shifts
between what can be saved
and what must be left to rot. if for you
that line is an electric fence,
i’ll turn the current off.
tonight, i want you
to trespass.

Claudia Kindrachuk is an unknown alien life form in the shape of a girl. Her work explores themes of queer feminism, the body, lesbian identity, and the ambiguities of language through a  sci-fi and surrealist-inspired poetics. She is grateful to have crash-landed on this planet on the traditional territory of the Anishinabek, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat Nations, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Find her on the web at spacealienprincess.neocities.org.