The first release of Piżama Press!

Poems by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi

102 pages

Publication date: May 27, 2025

Cover art by Matthew Revert

Illustrations by Gautam Rangan

About the Author

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is a novelist, poet, and educator. His debut novel, 2019’s The Book of Kane and Margaret (FC2/ UAP), received a positive review from Publishers Weekly, who called it a “beautifully rendered reflection on a dark moment of American history,” while acclaimed author Jeff VanderMeer said the novel was “one of my favorite reads of this or any year,” and author Lucy Corin added that it was “an abundance of astonishments. It’s not just a great debut, it’s a great book.” You can find more at www.kiikak.com.

About the Book

Disintegration Made Plain and Easy is the debut poetry collection from Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi. In this book, you will find surreal, absurd, dreamspeak poems full of humor, autobiographical mistruths, pop culture references, and heartfelt abstractions. With poems previously featured in Washington Square, Action Yes, Electric Lit, Your Impossible Voice, and many others, this 100 page book comes complete with line art illustrations from Gautam Rangan.

Advance Praise

“Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s poems take me to a place where I am laughing and frightened and not sure which way to turn. This book is a reminder that all literature should feel this way.”

- Daniel Handler, author of And Then? And Then? What Else?, aka Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events

"It's so damn hot in these poems! Celebrities and children cheek-by-jowl, snails and donkeys, all the mutant sonnets coming out of their mouths. All the salty grass. The ghosts. The anal clam meats. Who is Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi? Did he dissolve his face in these poems? Did he drink the whole hose of language? The whole hog? I go weak when I read Kiik's book. I want to lie down on each creepy good page."

- Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

“A deft intermingling of the pastoral, the absurd, the downright funny, and the disturbing. Disintegration Made Plain and Easy is at once cozy and deranged. It provokes the kind of blend of emotions that you might feel if you found out your grandmother had knitted a special and quirky outfit for your spouse to wear so that they could continue a serial killing rampage in style."

- Brian Evenson, author of Good Night, Sleep Tight

"Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s brain is an endangered species. There might only be one of his brain left. One night, during storytime with my daughter, I reached for a book by Leonora Carrington, or maybe it was Miroslav Holub, but grabbed, instead, Disintegration Made Plain and Easy. At first, my daughter was scared. Then she started laughing, with a look of mischief on her face, even danger. Then she closed her eyes and started nodding along. Araki-Kawaguchi’s poetry is a multiplex of odd miraculous fruits written in agony and foam—maybe a bit upside-down, maybe, as a result, a little too honest, but ultimately, the right choice.”

- Brandon Shimoda, author of Hydra Medusa

“The body inside this body of work is nakedly vulnerable and frequently naked: ‘Life is a record of a world through the mouth.’ Ghostly, self-effacing, brutally funny, and surreal, Disintegration Made Plain and Easy introduces multiple versions of the author in ‘about the author’ poems that challenge any singular understanding of voice or identity. These multiple selves are obsessed with death, with food, with body parts both human and animal. Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi meditates on time, musing in moody, beautiful, brilliant lines that ‘Death is the home no one can take from you / We gather the sugar that falls through the floor,’ only to flip a linguistic switch and dive into Batman and Robin’s origin story: ‘Allow me to introduce / Robin says / A man I met off craigslist / He gave me a taser gun / And sewed underwear / To the outside of my outfit.’ While strange mouths chew body parts and fantastic creatures bubble the sea, Araki-Kawaguchi dismantles bland narratives of assimilation and belonging, challenging ‘every white person who seems like / They were sterilized in a pot of boiling water,’ upending aspirations of blending in and buying everything: ‘Quite obviously I am living the american dream / Snakes pour from the heads of my daughters / Amnesia spills out of our pockets.’ I loved these firecracker poem-explosions, both for the beautifully weird images they make and the bold ideas they ignite, illuminated by Gautam Rangan’s lovely, haunting illustrations. This is a gorgeous gut punch of a wholly original book: ‘I cannot wring the smoke until it yields a voice.’”

- Carol Guess, author of Infodemic

Excerpt

a prose poem from the book, disguised as a fake bio (originally appearing in Electric Lit)

about the author

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s first book of poems made no impact whatsoever. Critics were not pleased by it saying we have no knowledge or record of her whatsoever. Kiik usually is a man. Unless no record exists in which case he is a woman. She was winner of the Haemophiliacs Hospital Raffle. Kiik lives here in this room. When you switch off the lights he comes in through the window and eats out of the garbage. Because he’s eaten the garbage seven years it is molecularly accurate if you say Kiik is mostly water garbage. When the lights come on Kiik deflates and he crawls inside this tiny box. A pupa wraps its mitten of fur around the word. The mouth of flour rubs its ghost over the flute. The angel of steam raises its palm flush to the barrel.

About the Illustrator

Gautam Rangan is an illustrator, animator, and interaction designer living in Los Angeles. He spent 8 years making media systems & visual content for massive water features at WET Design, for example light shows projected onto a 5 story tall circular waterfall at the Jewel building in Singapore. You can find more at www.gautamrangan.com.