Cassandra Barnett
sheds some skin
for vera
māui
i want you. i want to fight you. i want to fight for you. i want you
to be blonde
if you want to
i want you
slippery
māui.
slip māui, slide maaui \
malui \ maruki \
mazumi \ manuli \
mighty mousey mow-wee
or be
rupe
for realz.
take what psychedelics you need /
kava / tātaraamoa / fly agaric / bushlawyer /
werewere kōkako evidence-base
your shape-shifting, clone your ass
dna-splice you, graft those genes till
/you’re half pigeon, speaking
reo kererū
but still \full-
blooded
māori
then go
fly.
do you, māui
but be here now
& then be
> me >
be 20th then be >
21st century > post mixed race > post postmodern > post
postcolonial > post posthuman > post indigenous > post
māori > post gender > post covid > post climate > post
catastrophe > post pessimist > post binary > post AI > post
bionic > post strategic essentialist > post beyond > beyond post
> post māui > māui.
< be shebeen māui < swing māui < izakaya māui-san
be cook < be agassiz < be kant < be plato
< be christ then fuck it all, be
> buddha
spread those fine
brown
wings
and
fly,
then
be
< brian tāmaki
māui
< be billy t &
> billy tk
< be alan duff
māui, know your
hegemony & haka
each day
with your inside-
outside multi-
plicity
māui
be luminous-opalescent - be tardic-teleportation
- be futurist but be trad with it - be hopelessly
revisionist - conspiracist - recividist - be
not just passing but - becoming &
remember
to fly
māui.
- fling off
that hair - that
skin - that name - that mane - that
whakapapa, even - come creolised - come shorn
come commoditised - got that anti-pep to restore
your moana after any Moana - don’t need no help
with
your implications
in capital - just
take a deeeeeeep
new-world swim
then
rinse
(spells
in te wāhi ngaro
are the lion’s share of it)
come heterogeneous | cosmic | astrologic
come my og pluriverse pirate |
come huri-māui :) meet diaspora-māui
rolling
in the onanistic ocean-hay
till you’re so unromantically you that
no one ever speaks your name
yes
you
you
fly
are the
i
māui
fly
i claim:
eye
so my māui
fly,
fly
gasps & run-ins
1983
i am tenderly eight
not reading your story but the book
side-eyes me round the house.
the bone people?
must be a romp – neanderthal ancestors
prehistoric mana whenua!
it’s ‘83. i’m dreaming
resourceful hairy naked tupuna. the bone people
means we lived millennia
right here? a drier sandier
aotearoa & us, eternal us. our bones our
caves…
shady conspiracy caster
i carry my gut hunch down decades
before recalling
where the bone people lurked:
by clan of the cave bear on our shelf, next
to bam-bam in my head
within the echo
of a stepfather’s voice – that book
was disturbing
– & this
is how knowledge
gets made.
1994
just some northernerers of this global south come poking round
your neck of the bush, your canoe of the fish
your stony water. it’s 94. i haven’t abandoned my queer
haven’t read your ossuary of a story, still
we pilgrim, my friend and i, to okarito
tent quietly, gaze out, mythic surface, lagoon bilious
werewolf silver, swelling, with taniwha
(one hybrid crony sniffs out another: all ready for your
sultry rocks, flamenca strings, garnet, topaz, neologisms
fine wine, scotch, neglect & regret unpunctuate)
till in silence, i finger the night; & that’s all
next day we leave.
we leave hastily, if you please
lagoonspooked
2019
i’m stumbling late through hard gold your heart a mother now how wrong
how viciously i adore your flailing truth we harm
the kids we love
it’s 2019 & this only this your question : what is loving?
200 yrs lost possessions? 2000 yrs boulders dogs stars hands clean
& who will let us be ourselves as written? & who will
love us i mean me ?
i love fail hide run down years touch fire from the cool end of my smouldering stick
be every we queer bi breeder deviant newt refusenik shamefaced
shamefaced you withheld solidarity so long
ricochet from whoever demands i belong sneer-live this harm life
1 miraculous child spirit to show 1 heart divested of fight 1 unresolveable
sum of parts
& who will love us? midges at lagoon edge spilling gold
& if 1 glistening pool mercuryblood smileless swelling steady then is
condemned tower home? is heart hardgold & who & who will
& what is ?
Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa Ngāti Huri) is a writer across worlds, language unlearner, solo Māmā, shapeshifter, avid weeder, reo Māori dreamer. In 2021 she published the chapbook How | Hao with <thechronicleof.nz>, and was a founding member of the publishing collective Taraheke. Cassandra’s work can be found in Cordite, Landfall, Action|Spectacle, Te Whē ki Tukorehe, RNZ Reading Room, Brief, OraNui, Pantograph Punch, Ate, Counterfutures, South as a State of Mind (Documenta 14), No Other Place to Stand (Auckland UP 2021), Robin White: Something is Happening Here (Te Papa Press 2021), Te Manu Huna a Tāne (Massey UP 2020), Huia Short Stories 13 (Huia 2019) and Black Marks on the White Page (Penguin Random House 2017).