Can't sucessfully use the Neo4j API to send and execute a Cypher query

fwiw this works via curl

 curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{   \"statements\": [   {   \"statement\": \"RETURN 1\"  } ] }"  http://localhost:7474/db/neo4j/tx/commit

and returns

{"results":[{"columns":["1"],"data":[{"row":[1],"meta":[null]}]}],"errors":[],"lastBookmarks":["FB:kcwQwmlUd/XlSAaazhJtAnHT+m+Q"]}

and with Neo4j 5.23