For want of English I lie back on the living room sofa, reclining on Western leather, I try on third aunt-in-law’s wedding tiaras, I watch a gecko walk circles on the ceiling. Once I’d trapped it in an orange cup, I realised I didn’t know what Chinese geckos eat. An ocean away from speaking to anyone in English, Here my incompetence is held out as a pointed example, To impale myself on. Each nod I make to bridge the silence is a strike against me. You can see in the 眼神, in the eye’s expression, Foreign born and bred. I fall silent, nodding. An ocean away I am stroking a gecko’s scaly brown back, Looking for something to do. Rifling through pirated CD collections I grasp at Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Surrounded by the cadence of Cantonese, For want of English, I make Jackson dance for me. He moonwalks backwards and forwards. With each crotch thrust, time hangs suspended in boredom.
Ailsa Liu is an artist working across electronic music, performance, installation, fiction and poetry. She writes strangely humorous, uncomfortable stories on semi- autobiographical experiences of liminal spaces and their feelings of loneliness and anticipation. She is a member of Finishing School and All Girl Electronic. She is currently studying Fine Arts/Arts at UNSW.
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