thunderstruck
When my wife was struck through by lightning
We all wondered aloud
What superpowers will befall the baby
And how cruel will children nearby grow
As it turned out our baby was perfectly healthy
She kissed my sad head wow at the temples
And thunderstruck I forgot
The first 33 years of my life
God jesus thank you there had been
So much I regretted about myself to that point
The pain is not erased but
I caulked my basket and crossed the river
May I near my moldy fruit eat what’s sweet
Around moments of rot and embarrassment
Wow sure thank you
Like my bankers upon the oregon trail
Many times have I been killed by a diarrhea
Many times has a snakebite turned me blue
Lucky for me poisons take me slowly
So kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me
My ghost is powerful
Tie me to the food the clothing
Ammunition and spare wagon parts
My darling I will lug it to the next fire
*This poem was inspired by, and borrows language from, the poem “Thunderstruck Kiss” by Kim Eon Hee in Have You Been Feeling Blue These Days? (2019), translated by Sung Gi Kim and Eunsong Kim.
gosh
Rare unearthly thing
How did I emerge from the snail
From the salty eye of February
Gosh in the river of milk
I dove like a tear towards the bottom
Hid there like an egg I suppose
Turned myself an amphibian I suppose
Miracle miracle wow somehow the dream
I’d been having of being human wow
Clung to my water like a goatskin wow
Your mother saw my man-shape
Weirdly dancing in the moonlight
And said are you a man ok well
All that matters is we believe
Though I never really believed
I was more than a carbonated water in a goatskin
You swelled and arrived
And sweetened eating all the watermelon
I could hack in the dark blue city
With my six arms with six knives
Here we are here we go
You arrived and trampled me
Into the prehistoric carpet
*The language “rare unearthly thing” is borrowed from from Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2011 film Jane Eyre, which was adapted from the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is the author of DISINTEGRATION MADE PLAIN AND EASY (Piżama Press) and THE BOOK OF KANE AND MARGARET (FC2 / UAP).
