Last Ride

Standing in the shower, grateful

for the control of my body

I imagine the pitiless

effect of gravity.

Your precious head bounced along. Shoulders

rolled from side to side.

Could it not be a circus wagon?

Embellished with enticing signs

of strength and wonder.

Lights, fire, action.

Wires

And that night in the corridor I heard him

tell the nurse, 'I can't sit or stand or lie down.'

What do you want to do then?

And soon after, the police were called

milling outside the curtain.

I had to pee. I walked passed him,

holding the disconnected wires,

holding the back of my gown closed.

Head down, unable to put himself

anywhere—a furious frustration.

And I don't even know what he looked like,

a man restrained by the presence of other men.

Feet agitated, body swaying,

head down until things quietened.

Moving House

It was winter and I wrote:

Maybe this is my last winter.

In spring we planted flowers.

Sculpted and made choices;

sticky bees nudging our fingers—we never

recoiled or shrieked. They knew us

and we knew them.

Wes Lee lives in Wellington. Her latest poetry collection By the Lapels was launched in 2019 (Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2019). Her work has appeared in a wide array of publications in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, including Best New Zealand Poems, Westerly, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry London, New Writing Scotland, The London Magazine, The Stinging Fly, The New Zealand Listener, Breach of all Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love and Venice. She has won a number of awards for her writing. Most recently she was selected as a finalist for The Sarah Broom Poetry Prize 2018, awarded the Poetry New Zealand Prize 2019 by Massey University Press, and shortlisted for The NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2021. She is the featured poet in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2022.