Release of Lips Hit By Anaesthesia
The eye pencil which I wrote this with papered over a smooth passage for the actual lie-narrative. It was a track, or the colour of an ape glove, setting sail. We, my wife and I, worked like a double kayak. I was mumbling into the back of her neck and she, shouting back towards me from the prow with a rolled-up piece of butcher’s paper. I could reach out to the loudspeaker as a sailing boat wiped the surface of the lake. I offered an account of her quizzical concentration, adding a thin layer to the middle of her left brow – raiding it – but it was difficult! I licked my finger and aimed and erased. I had to keep time with the sexual rhythm of the fibreglass kayak. I affected a mandrill pinching her cheeks and vacuuming a corner of the living room. I found a receipt. If I could document her face. It would prove something. But I was only able to see a cancelled transaction—surfboard wax. I saw it when I paused, my elbow on the bonnet of a car, gliding on her shoulder. Pure eyeliner! One powdery blue peacock jerked around that eyelash. I could smell old putty, a real mess outside the dripping tap. Mould grew around the exact repetition needed to sustain it. I yawned. Big monkey silly exaggerated thing I couldn’t tell where the imitation of the yawn began and the actual yawn ended.
Luke Beesley’s fifth poetry collection, Aqua Spinach (Giramondo), was published in late 2018. His poetry has been published widely in Australia and internationally and has been translated into several languages. He lives in Melbourne. www.lukebeesley.com