People ask me what’s it like living in New Zealand
Image: From the Living Room by Peter Roome, flickr and The Praries 1 by Nautical 9, flickr. Adapted and combined by Hanna Sandgren.
It’s a beautiful place
a lot of Americans are eyeing like the Martians
in War of the Worlds,
to layer over with
silos;
end of the world condominiums
where lighting
is utmost
to combat depression,
where the prairies
play on an endless loop
in windowless rooms,
where the men with guns outside
are on your payroll
the pilot’s
family taken care of.
In their dreams each night
a strange savage cat goes out,
returns
to place a broke-neck bird.
-
Wes Lee
Wes Lee is the author of Cowboy Genes (Grist Books 2014). Her poems have been published in Westerly, Cordite, Meniscus, Verandah, Underneath: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Poetry Prize Anthology 2015, Landfall, The London Magazine, Magma, Poetry London, and NOON. She has work forthcoming in Elbow Room, and HeadStuff.
