In 2008, JH Phrydas wrote a story about how bodies talk without words.
He wanted the story to not just describe the silent ritual of nonverbal communication but to perform it.
The interaction would be visceral - the exchange melancholic, yet full of lust.
He wanted words to retain the unsayable: the subtle movements of a body in heat.
In the years since, Phrydas kept rewriting this story, using different techniques, different syntaxes and forms, in hopes that he would find a successful method of gestural writing.
IMPERIAL PHYSIQUE is a collection of these attempts.
They explore the way our bodies hover between animal and human, civil and wild.
The bleakness - and underlying verve - of imagining Western empires in decline serve as a backdrop for a lone figure searching city streets, decaying architecture, and sand dunes for some type of physical connection.
What arises is the loss of - and longing for - touch at the edges of imperialism, historical violence, and personal shame.
Paired with these stories are essays on queer embodiment, figuration, and plasticity that emerged through conversations with somatic psychologists, art therapists, and poets.
They give context to the short stories and offer other ways to engage with the book: through thinking of language as texture, as sculpture, as a physical yearning against empire.
The place where language and the body merge.
JH PHRYDAS is a writer and queer preservationist.
Raised by his birth family in Atlanta and queer family in the Bay Area, he studied writing, somatic psychology, and ceramics under the mentorship of Bhanu Kapil.
His first book of poetry, LEVITATIONS, was published by Timeless, Infinite Light (2015), and a chapbook of excerpts from IMPERIAL PHYSIQUE, was published by Essay Press (2017).
Phrydas is currently researching and writing a biography of drag performer and fashion designer Mr.
David Glamamore - a living icon - by weaving together oral histories of a hundred queer and trans performers and artists.
| Unsayable | The subtle movements of a body in heat |
|---|---|
| They give context to the short stories and offer other ways to engage with the book | Through thinking of language as texture as sculpture as a physical yearning against empire |
Punctum Books Imperial physique, paperback/jh phrydas
