Pandora’s box is my body

In a workshop with poet Jane Gregory, our group celebrated the end of the semester with an exquisite corpse-inspired exercise, shuffling and reassembling lines in many steps (most of which I can’t remember, though musical chairs were involved in the beginning). In the last phase of the exercise, each poet worked individually to build a new poem from the group’s exquisite corpse poem. A fellow poet called out to me: “’Pandora’s box is my body’—that line has to be yours, right?”

I don’t remember. But it does sound accurate. I imagine that someone wrote “Pandora’s box,” and then the music stopped, and I sat in her chair. It was my turn to complete the line. “Pandora’s box is my body” just felt obvious then (as it does right now). However, I did not use that line in my poem that day, perhaps because it felt too obvious, and I like it better when my poems surprise me.

“Pandora’s Box is my body” now floats outside of any particular poem, an internal chant that starts playing on repeat without apparent prompt. I fold laundry. I reply to email. I boil water for tea. Pandora’s box is my body. The line creates a strange periphery, an ambient, insistent pressure. Maybe it’s a catalyst to future poetry which—like a chemical catalyst—isn’t consumed by the new poem’s energy.

Here are two different unfinished drafts, each catalyzed by “Pandora’s box is my body”: