‘So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction’
— Joyce Chong
See how
I am all rosejuice and wonderdrunk? See how
my throat is filling with salt? Boil me. Divide
me. Wrap me in paper and return me to earth.
I’m cheating a little since this poem has already been mentioned in Monday’s post, but a second reminder to read it definitely won’t hurt you. In this poem, Kaveh explores the tentative nature of the body, of where the line between self as mind and self as physicality is drawn, all ragged earth and cracked stone. There is a peculiarity to the body. Is it something you inhabit, clumsily manning the wheel to a ship that’s prone to drifting astray? Cohabitation? Or, is the body you? No line to divide the mind and the physical, no way to see where the seams have been hidden. It’s strange to think of how fragile we are, how oddly resistant; the way cells can turn in on themselves, or out against the world.
The tone of the poem is enough to stop you, to draw out from you the unexpected. Ending in brisk certainties, it grows instructional, becomes command. The only thing you can ever ask of or be certain of, is that one day we will be something less, or more, than just our bodies. We forget ourselves, sometimes; the spaces we take in the world.