Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“I think because my work channels my secrets and anxieties, I sometimes get the feeling my language lapses into unpleasant idioms. I’m thinking of something that makes me uncomfortable, unworthy, embarrassed, it’s sort of a feeling like I am standing in front of my 6th-grade crush, and because I can’t think of anything to say, my mind uncomfortably panicked and frozen, I can only say something common and cruel, maybe an expression my father told me to convince me I was not ugly. “You know what they say, beauty is only skin-deep. And the most important thing is you have a great personality.” Yuck. The cure for this is surrealism. I’m pretty limited in my abilities here, but what I do is to try to lean into the unpleasant thing my brain wants to say for about 3 seconds, and then, through wild association, resist what my brain wants for the next 2 hours. So, “another day, another dollar” becomes “another day, another soup, god, I am simple, I will dunk my bread . . .” Improvisation, chance, surprise, wild leaps, dream-logic, these are the overriding principles. Resistance to where the brain wants to default. Which is to wake up and start talking like a college-admissions essay. Yuck, am I right?”
— Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
~~~
you have been to this party before
You have been to this party before / Butcher / Baker / A creature ignited into flames / Dubstep of course / Ambien of course / Prawn and peapod yes pretty / Yes please legs muddy with prawn eggs / Of course one creature dancing their remains / Around another sleeping in the bathtub of ice
i like my hunger
I like my hunger
I put it on everything
The butt of bread
The brandywine tomatoes
Living is a language of hunger
I want to make love to a man
No not a man exactly but I want to
Make love to something extremely hairy
A wolf then
My hunger recognizes the hunger in a wolf
Maybe we do not have to make love
I could simply feed him
All the bread I can find
How far will he go before losing consciousness
Or is somehow immobilized from too many breads
I like to cook a family of birds in their own fat
And a country of olives in their own juices
I like montmorency cherries
I like tart my mouth goes alive
With the word in my mouth
But back to my wolf
What do you do once he is perfectly still from all that bread
I suppose then you could make love to him
Or you could cook him up
The stuffing is already stuffed down in there
His liver like a fire god’s to be spread across my tongue
The woods are deep and plentiful near my house
There is warm-blooded fare
There are lovers
The sorrel erupts and jubilates
I kiss everything beneath the sour cherries
the first thing people recognize about me is i’m suicidal
The first thing people recognize about me is I’m suicidal / My pants give that away / So tight / All the blood has gone to my parrot / The third shoulder of blood who whispers / The intrusive mind cycles 9 then 90 then 900 times daily / The soul is a reel behind the window
another day another
Another day another
Soup god I
Am simple I
Will dunk my
Bread into the
Rain whatever juices
In the nightbowl
I make love
My mouth is
Full of bread
The moon stops
Like a clock
Overhead god how
I fall how
Must I eat
Twice my weight
In salt
it’s true what they’re saying
It's true what they’re saying / Everybody is having more fun than you / Even nuns with spiders on them / The scientists came together / A hotel in florida / I am thinking what you’re thinking / A real covid den / Men died to bring you truth / Everybody is having more fun than you / Especially in bed / Even the dead / Medical studies say necrophilia has probiotic benefits / You can have your kombucha and f*** it too / That look on your face is called shaming my kink / See this is why nobody calls you
a dark valley
My love my love I want
To say this without words
But my body will disappear
The words will stay here
Put whatever fire you have beside mine
Our home is all the sticks
We have gathered
We try to keep the years inside
But they escape like birds
They go to the time before our births
We try to keep the children near
But they leap they are cast
We cannot have them back
Time collects us
Beneath a dark valley
We build the next
Furniture there
All the sticks
We burned
Arrive
~~~
Some of these poems previously appeared in an exhibition in San Diego called Lost in Translation: A Game of Telephone.
~~~
Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is the author of the novel THE BOOK OF KANE AND MARGARET (FC2 / UAP) and the poetry manuscript DISINTEGRATION MADE PLAIN AND EASY. He teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. You can find more at kiikak.com.
