Poetry / Maxwell Suzuki

:: Wrestling ::

From the writer

:: Account ::

In my poetry, I have been obsessed with what it means to be queer, to have loved someone, and for it to bubble deep within history. I wanted to challenge our understandings of masculinity (and sexuality) within the context of ancient cultures as well as our own; how they mingle and diverge from each other. And when learning about Ancient Greece in particular, I was fascinated with how power, as a man, was tied to sexuality rather than strictly being about gender. This dimension of sexuality was something I hadn’t thought about and wanted to delve into that complexity.

When writing “Wrestling”, I decided to play with space, in that I imagined the stanzas as being two men interconnected and fighting for dominance. And in that dominance, there is an intrinsic emotional fragility to the wrestlers. That intimate physicality through aggression, I think, is the only way for some men to feel a connection beyond themselves. “Wrestling” understands these relationships, is restrained in divulging the secrets of the wrestlers, and works to reveal their queer subtleties.

Maxwell Suzuki is a queer writer who lives in Los Angeles. Maxwell’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in CRAFT, Lunch Ticket, ANMLY, and trampset. He is writing a novel on the generational disconnect between Japanese American immigrants and their children.