leah dodd
brain block
- I want to write, without thought or reason
- except the reasons are that I am getting depressed again
- and watching my youth pass or even waiting for it to
- the reasons are that I am constructing a human inside of me
- or he is constructing himself and I am giving him the means
- it might be an unwise thing to do in this political and ecological climate
- especially at the ripe age of twenty-one
- but you kind of forget that once it happens
- my boss threaded a ring to a strand of my hair and told me I was having a boy
- because the ring swung back and forth and hers swung in circles for girls
- I must write because there is nearly nothing left in me
- like the last bits of your soul that a dementor takes
- leaving you pale and ridden of your happiest
- my happiest was maybe playing alone in the garden in summer
- by the tangelo trees with the sprinklers on
- (one was tangelo and one was orange and sometimes you’d get them mixed up)
- the air thick and glittering and dad somewhere nearby
- I so wanted him to come and look at whatever I was doing
- the best part was that he did but that is when the memory ends
- it is maybe my earliest memory too
- like tracing loops around the house eating box raisins
- will my baby be happy to walk around eating box raisins?
- sometimes I think shit, I look pregnant
- then remember that I am pregnant
- sometimes I remember that I myself will have to birth our baby
- it is a hard thing to come to terms with
- it is a hard thing to start writing again
- and an even harder thing to stop
- to dissect, to rearrange
- I am thinking I will have to keep going
- going
- going
do androids dream of gender equality?
I could not care less if Deckard is an android or not
because he is a hopeless misogynist
who only cares about whether he has a goat or an ostrich
and what his neighbours will think
I would feel sorry for him if he didn’t treat women so terribly
even if they too are an android, or not
don’t get me started on Philip K. Dick, who just loves
to write about how small women’s breasts are
I have had enough of poorly-written women
android or otherwise
if the point is to mark the duality between
false or real, human or android
surely the point is also to respect those around you
yet this does not apply to gender
the film adaptation is objectively even worse
and if you’ve seen it then you know why
but the time spent on character in the novel
is almost harder to get through
it may not matter if you are organic or electric
but these women are always screwed
in San Francisco or New New York
in science fiction or in life
small breasts or otherwise
edge
the boy next door plays Jeff Buckley
and then the Smiths, probably
grabbing the aux cord before the lads
come back from the booze run
our flatmate cooks pasta and the house
is hot with onions, tomatoes
girls on the street shriek about
their sex lives, their cigarettes
before the pale moon glow
our dim bedroom becomes orange
my baby stretches in my centre
pushes his body head to toe while
mine, still, makes room for him
when he is born it will be warm
the edge of summer waits
at the window, open longer
than usual and letting us
wake up gently, gently
a baby mosquito floats slowly in
not yet wild and blood-drunk
not yet unwelcome
Leah Dodd is a newly minted Victoria University graduate with a degree in English, Film and Creative Writing. She tried to write more before she became a sleep-deprived new mum in December.