Machinery
by WES LEE
Wearing the night like a lifesaving dummy.
kneeling before your open mouth. an abandoned
mall. copper pipe. hidden architecture: wires
hanging from the ceiling like stalactites. this new
world where things close and never open again.
the architecture of your email. a sharpened
shell. like an omission. like your steady gaze.
a fragile core. a pyramid scheme. your hand
never reached for the first rung; you never wanted to climb
the crazy Seussian tower of topple. doors designed
to be visible only to those who are trained to see.
and the rest, we hammer and wonder and cry. wearing
the night like the grim northern gums of your ancestors.
cancer sticks set out on trays at half time. the matinee
of eyes. in the room where hearts are discussed
swims the ghost of your mother's death. a plastic
model of a life-size heart. the new world has come quickly:
automatic, cash free, desolate. like the captured
eye of the swift, unfocused on our reality. and I
remembered how you said you were happy that the nurses
liked your mother for her sense of humour. and we would
be two humans in a room where anything could
happen. and the nurse said can you relax
your legs, just allow them to flop. wearing the night
like money to keep us safe from pain, feeding it
in our clothes, slotted over our hearts. 'we can
still leave the building,' I told you: the wide balustrade
opening out to a glass door, to the hospital carpark where
we could drive. like lush machinery. like 3am:
the miraculous moment when the fibrillation
stopped; the heart quietened. one moment then
another changed moment. tensed on the bed, driven
crazy by maracas out of sync. the clean miracle
his body made. wearing the night like indelible words.
hitting the truth hard. like deciding you are
the galleon and you could co-exist in the tank
with the fish. sink quietly to the bottom. two
did not make it out of childhood, one dead at birth;
quietly as he came from them, almost slipped in.
and I thought about a few of the nurses, later, in the day's
drift, in the dream I needed. and I kept whispering
each time the animal struggled in my chest: stay in the
dream, the living waking dream. dropping each arising
thought that did not fit with the dream, that did not talk
to the dream.
Published in the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024
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My Baby
by WES LEE
My baby
I would have tied
to the bed with stockings like
Sharon Stone in Casino
then gone out and got wasted, legless,
staggering home
and forgetting.
My baby
I would have locked
in the wardrobe like Truman
Capote’s red-headed mother
then gone out and got wasted, legless,
staggering home
and forgetting.
My baby
I would have put in a cot
and locked the door
like Baby P’s mother
then gone out and got wasted, legless,
staggering home
and forgetting
who could not tell if her baby was
just thin or dirty
or silent because
it was happy.
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Published in Fresh Ink: A Collection of Voices in Aotearoa, August 2017
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The Terrific Beating of My Heart
by WES LEE
And I realised
I had come to the emergency room
for company.
To avoid the metal clang of home.
The paramedic said: 'That'll do it,
that kind of trauma,'
with a fantastic Irish lilt,
and arranged for a tray of breakfast.
His quick hands like doves
over my forearms.
Published in Best New Zealand Poems, 2021
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Ointment
by WES LEE
You always thought crazy
was a defection of the will,
you’d been in that place holding on
for months, and you managed
(to stay on this side),
so you made up your mind
that people choose crazy,
but that was just one time
in your life
you thought was the worst,
didn’t know
the worst comes like waves
and you are
Mickey Mouse
the brimming bucket
the mop
the stone floor
the castle with its interior
arches, and the wizard.
And your sore arms
get sore
then relax
(by your sides)
and sore
then relax
and sore
then relax.
And sore
you are rubbed with wintergreen
with eyes
with understanding
until
you aren’t.
Published in Poethead, February 2020. First published in Westerly 60:1, University of Western Australia
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One Summer: Orcas in the Bay
by WES LEE
We began excitedly moving out of the sea —
not in a furious tumble the way
we would at the sight of a shark.
Lines of cars stopped on the road,
people climbing out to raise their hands
above their eyes.
A swirling fracas as they thrashed under the waves.
The huge male surfacing in front of us barely
ten feet away.
‘Probably hunting something. Most likely stingrays,’
someone said.
And after, it felt as if we’d been pumped with helium.
As if earth’s gravity had loosened its grip
and all the parts of us were trying to lift off.
Telling the story again.
Wanting to hear it from each other’s lips;
provoking each other to embellish it.
Polishing each aspect.
Then we set it down.
Awarded 2nd prize in the Takahē Monica Taylor Poetry Prize judged by Elizabeth Smither. Published in The Beach Hut, January 2020
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The Girl in the Basement / The Boy in the Basement
By WES LEE
And I wanted to be the girl / in True Detective / Catatonic /
Cared for / in the perfect institution / the place where
horror is mediated / The girl /
rescued / and loved forever / The girl swept up in the arms
of the detectives / who have never witnessed such horror /
I wanted to be taken up by the protectors /
passed from hand to hand / to be that girl forever / And I
wanted someone to listen / I wanted
to be turned around like a / precious / piece of glass ... of something /
I wanted to be handled / with care /
And I suppose I wanted people to look at me / the way they do
on TV / with a rare quality / as if I was rare / and what I’d been
through was so rare as to render me / priceless /
The wan girl / in the oversize cardigan /
the rescued girl / The girl who is found years after / The girl
who escapes / and comes home and her family / have kept
her bedroom untouched / and they treat her /
as if each day is Christmas /
And I wanted to be the boy who lies / who returns home disguised
as the boy who vanished / and even when they find out / they
still keep calling him by the name / The name of the boy
who vanished.
Selected as a finalist in The Geometry/Open Book National Poetry Competition 2018 by Anna Livesey and Sophie van Waardenberg, and first published in Turbine /Kapohau 2018 (The Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University, Wellington)
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Lifesaving
By WES LEE
They don’t do it anymore,
breathe into the mouth to save.
We had learnt it reluctantly,
lined up beside a recumbent dummy,
waiting to take our turn to kneel at that mouth.
The simplest things disturb –
at night when the fluoros shut off and the cover is pulled,
the tiles swabbed – there it lies open,
not even a ventriloquist’s dummy
is so exposed.
2nd place winner in The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2015 – judged by Tristram Fane-Saunders and Holly Howitt-Dring