Paula Harris

Broadsheet10

question and answers

what
exactly
is your problem
with me?

it seemed like
nothing fazed you
until
you fucked off

and
yes
i'm pissed off

and
yes
we would
probably
be
an absolute fucking
disaster
together

but that isn't
enough
to dissuade me

(and besides,
think of all
the fun
we could have
before it all
falls
apart
spectacularly)

and no
i don't like
rugby
or Holden

and no
i don't want
kids
or dogs

and yes
i like you

and yes
i wish i didn't

and yes
i should know
better

and yes
you hurt me
again

and yes
i like it
when
we're lovers

and
yes
i would still say
yes
to you

First published in Broadsheet 10 (2012)

Paula Harris

About Paula

Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award, and was a semi-finalist for the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center writing residency in 2018.

Her poetry has been published in various journals, including Passages North, Barren, New Ohio Review, SWWIM, Gulf Coast, The Spinoff, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook and Aotearotica. Her essays have been published in The Sun, Passages North, The Spinoff and Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety (Victoria University Press).

She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric.