self-annihilation [theory]
— Muriel Leung
Often I’ll think back on it with some shame, the age of him and what I coveted, which was to be fully human and immeasurable in regards to my gifts and talents as a young student. My youth was a type of chariot that yanked the sun around with some duty of importance I’m always forgetting. Thus is the life of the institution. For love of [theory], I read for what the world concealed and found myself in it. If there was any skill I acquired, it would be that—to locate the body even when told it does not exist.
In that way, I was boundless. Then I awoke. A nearness to excellence could make the blood feel clean. Rattle the husk of me until my worthiness felt itself begin a low-lit glow. In truth, nothing did happen, but then what words can I assign this hole, to point the way there, where no theory would ever feel sufficient? To be plucked out of the many, to sing that song of highest belief, I stuffed my body’s hole with stones. Out of devotion, I can wage such war against myself.
If theory is meant to alleviate a certain pressure
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to elucidate a question hanging like a worry-tooth
loosen at the mouth
/ /
fray the text
its patterns /
its years
history of discursive pleasure
/
/ un-pleasure
to a politics of:
how to live
in a flummoxed time
the [bone] inscrutable
/
“scarred trace” of the bearing body
/ always
the season of textual mourning
was / already dead /
when spoken / of /
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