"n-body problem", Janice Heng
Hypothesis: the body inescapable once perceived.
Remove pronoun and the body lies still. Hypo-thesis
implying under, as in foundation of body of work, at remove.
As in corpus. I did not want to write about the body. Implying
I did so anyway. The first mistake was to invite the body in. As
in: to allow any body of pronouns. Once admitted, the I
walks to the end of the body’s line in search of skin. In
the game or otherwise. For every I, a face. The body walks
out of its pronoun. The body as territory to poet: like the
hungering mosquito, going anywhere uninvited. A bite. A body out
of explanations. For every I, a name. A body of readers hungering
for shorthand. I could be a demographic of one. A body of
work implies authorship. I could be a drift of leaves. Read body for
dead. The body reasserts itself at the beginning. Goes to work
wearing anyone else’s face. The body can rest when it’s dead.
So let it. The world wants to know what the body is wearing.
Itself, down. I do not want to write about the body, so
there are only corpses. Perhaps by body I only ever meant the self.
Begin again. How do I free the body from its sentence? There,
perceived. The body’s first mistake was to begin.