Kacey Martin

Kacey Martin is a Māori-Australian living in Eora/Sydney. She is a budding writer-poet, sociological doctoral researcher, and lived experience advocate. She is also a proud cat mum to two wonderful cats. Her writing has been published in Cordite Poetry Review and UNSWeetened Literary Journal. You can find her on Instagram at @kaceymartinwrites.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

she/they/alien

CW: sexual/gendered violence, body dysphoria/dissociation

and if i had lived in a world

where my 12-year-old body

had been left untouched,

i would naively wish back

my sexless childhood form.

but instead this flab and flesh

beckons endless warring—

a battleground of thought,

to debate and legislate

upon chest and crease;

calling to action those men

of needing, wanting,

who crave the take,

who seek to subdue,

who burn to break,

who pine to punish,

for our being and being seen,

for serving sweet smiles

on delicate chinaware,

for seething beneath

soft paper crepe skin,

for daring to be

desired woman,

for daring to be

undesired unwoman—

both vile violations

of the masculine sacred order.

wide eyes sold

dreams of lives lived as

shiny, sparkly things:

some well-sought trinkets

displayed in cold glass cases,

others secured in steel safes,

while the scuffed are left

on second-hand shelves,

ready and ripe for rough use.

this body is a life sentence,

both trial and punishment,

for coming into being screaming red.

i mould into femme-being form,

casting mirage and shadow—

you can never know me.

and alone in bed, unseen in dark,

i melt back into true pure unbeing,

which is where i find my core.

she or they – i cannot say.

i only feel not home here

because this here has been

long conquered and torn—

to unrecognition, to formless form.

but too i make a poor actress,

forgetting my lines,

losing my props,

staining curated costume.

what is it to be her –

but being hurt?

perhaps i am not of this earth—

neither she nor they, but alien.