W. Todd Kaneko
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Self Portrait as Flash Gordon
[1935 Radio Drama Subtext Variant]
Tell me how you feel
about skin, about desire’s
pinpricks broadcast
across a starship’s prow,
through my transistor radio
after dark. A good Foley
artist can spin
a mock planet
real with broom clatter
and tin cans. A character actor
materializes in static,
squeaks out threats
in foreign accents
to project ideas
about how evil resonates
in strange bodies,
about the pale-skinned
girl seized by orangutan
hands, the steady-voiced
champion who saves
America on Saturday nights.
Earthlings are alluring to
damsels in the sky,
faces fearful of frost
giants and mole men,
always scornful
even if this galaxy
is made up
of unearthly creatures—
tell me how I look
from outer space, so
I can still feel
human—not just
humanoid,
the alien’s shade,
the eclipse
of his spirit.
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W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor, 2014). His poems and prose have appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Barrelhouse, The Normal School, The Collagist, and many other journals and anthologies. A Kundiman fellow, he is co-editor of Waxwing magazine and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University. Visit him at www.toddkaneko.com.