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Helena leon Mayer

Dream Body / Body Dream

after ‘The Harbour’ by Nina Mingya Powles

1. Always the same blood, always the same skin.

a) When I swim the water is visceral. When I surface my mother is dead.
b) When I am pregnant I am marsupial. There is a fetus curled in my hands, bleeding into my t-shirt.
c) I run to the bathroom to call my mother but she is already dead. I remember never having gender. I grimace and crumble in the light. They see blood and tell me I’m in the wrong bathroom. The fact is the bleeding, the dream is the stain.

2. Dear feminine,

I fall asleep thinking of kitchen knives
slipping off the tips of my fingers.
It’s a week before my (birth)day
And I slice the blood out of my body and into a panic.
Do you remember when I was a ghost?
Do you remember the moment, dripping out of this skin,
seeing the body (opaque) from above?
Do you remember when I sat on your lap and woke up scared?
Do you remember when we first kissed on the roof
before you flickered into someone else?
Do you remember me holding you in the water, floating, fragile?
I don’t want your tight lungs and
I don’t want your twisted clothes.
I want this delicate rush and this
afternoon of sun.
I am not purple
I will just say I am so that when
you see me you don’t think of blood.

3. Dear dreamer,

last night show me where you flicker
you or you or you or you
this unsettled quiet spilling
stains your sheets while you sleep
I’m not real but neither
are you

4. Body / Dream

the fact is the construction.
the dream is the gendering.
the fact is visceral.
the dream is marsupial.
the fact is skin slipping.
the dream is skin spilling open.
the fact is the metal waves.
the dream is my mother’s voice.
the fact is two bathrooms.
the dream is a cup full of moon.
the fact is the bleeding.
the dream is the stain.

Tutorial Worksheet 7: Gender Assignment

Make a list of characteristics associated with being masculine, then associated with being feminine. Looking at this list, identify which characteristics are forms of behaviour and which are physical attributes associated with either the male or the female body. Remember to ask yourself – is it possible for a person of the opposite sex to behave in this way or accomplish that physical task?

and i have so much fomo and the winter never ends

so you start to mould. so I take you to the table and I take our biggest knife and I ask, please. so I wiggle the corner of the cleaver into your ridges, your ribs.

and when I sleep I can’t breathe

so I press down with all my weight. so I scoop you dripping and seedy. so I slice and thud.

and all my vegetables are rusting

so I fry onions and carrot and garlic (lots of garlic) and turmeric and cumin and coriander and garam masala and smoked paprika and cayenne pepper and chilli oil and miso and red bean pepper paste.

and the ocean is rioting

so I throw you, show you glowing. so I add coconut cream and lentils. so you melt. so I make pink pickled onions and grow coriander and buy yogurt.

and you smell good.

Helena Leon Mayer is German, Pākehā, and studying Sociology in Ōtepoti. They like knitting, cooking, and swimming even when it’s way too cold. They help run a creative fundraiser at @crochet_for_palestine.

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