Wrestling

Poetry / Maxwell Suzuki

:: Wrestling ::

Maxwell Suzu­ki Wrestling — PDF

 

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. Maxwells 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. 

From the Editor’s Laptop

For addi­tion­al work by the tal­ent­ed con­trib­u­tors of the Fall 2022 issue of The Account, please see the links below 

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Maxwell Suzu­ki


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I would be remiss not to acknowl­edge the work of our atten­tive genre edi­tors whose vital labor of cura­tion is the cen­tral core that dri­ves The Account.

For more on the editors 

Lyn­d­sey Ellis, Fic­tion Editor

Rachele Salvi­ni, Non­fic­tion Editor 

Christi­na Stod­dard, Poet­ry Edi­tor, Man­ag­ing Editor 

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A spe­cial thank you to our Founding/Consulting Edi­tor Tyler Mills whose sup­port has kept the ship sail­ing, and has allowed The Account to sus­tain with an eye towards acces­si­bil­i­ty for our read­er­ship.

For more on Tyler Founding/Consulting Editor

Tyler Mills 

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And thank you, to you read­er, for your thought­ful atten­tion. At a time where every moment has end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties it’s heart­en­ing to see lit­er­ary works as the start­ing point for con­ver­sa­tion, and the fore­ground for com­mu­ni­ty.

End­less Grat­i­tude,


Sean Cho A.

Edi­tor in Chief 

The Account