Dec. 3, 2023
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BAD NOVELTY
By Kyla Jamieson
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BAD NOVELTY
By Kyla Jamieson
The doctor put her hands over my liver
She told me my resentment's getting smaller
-Phoebe Bridgers
On Twitter, Phoebe breaks the news
that my favourite lyric is just something
a doctor said while giving her
a colonic. When the acupuncturist
asks me to map my headache
I falter then admit I can’t remember
the shape of the pain, though it occurred
only yesterday. I’m trying to get better
at staying in my body long enough
to witness the worst of it. Is today
Monday? I never know what day it is.
An afternoon morphs into a weekend,
three weeks cosplay as two
business days. 2020 was the year
Normative Time merged with Sick Time
& I still can’t bear the tourists
who come here acting like everything
is a bad novelty, a bottle episode
they’d rather skip. I’m starting
the fifth year of my longitudinal
qualitative study of self & symptoms.
Note: subject rarely leaves her residence.
In their childhood isolation, twin sisters
Poto & Cabengo built their own
language. In illness, I learn new
terminology: flare, crash, flood.
I was raised in a valley town
where rivers feed into the ocean
& high waters play a recurring role.
An octogenarian resident once told
the local paper A river becomes
something else when it’s in flood.
In a familiar nightmare, I try to steer
a pickup downstream through raging
whitewater brown with silt. Concussion
Apocalypse: a subgenre in which
the plot always repeats itself. My brain
falters, the crack in the levee
where danger gets in. You don’t
have to know that it’s haunted.
A mind becomes something else
when it’s in flood.
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Notes on the text:
The italicized newspaper quote is from an article in the Squamish Chief, quoting Ellen Grant. The epigraph and final italicized line are from "Garden Song" by Phoebe Bridgers.
Kyla Jamieson
photo credit: Morgan Wallace
Kyla Jamieson lives and relies on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, in the city currently known as Vancouver, Canada. Her début collection of poems, Body Count (Nightwood Editions, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and placed third in the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. Her writing reimagines time, embodiment, care, and intimacy in the aftermath of a brain injury. Find her on Instagram as @kyla__jamieson or on a rock next to a river.
Image description: The poet Kyla Jamieson wearing a white turtleneck with a dark green jacket over top, leaning against a parked car on a tree-lined side street in the fall. She has long wavy brown hair, green eyes, and pale skin. Her head is tilted to her left and her expression is neutral.