W. Todd Kaneko
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toddkaneko.bsky.social
W. Todd Kaneko
@toddkaneko.bsky.social
2.2K followers 600 following 160 posts
Author: This Is How the Bone Sings & The Dead Wrestler Elegies. Co-author: Slash / Slash, Poetry: Writers Guide & Anthology. Writing teacher. he/him/dad

https://linktr.ee/toddkaneko
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toddkaneko.bsky.social
I always say that only cops and crooks call me by my first name and I got this letter today, a scam that targets people with Asian last names offering to split a nonexistent inheritance. Sharing it so my friends with vulnerable relatives can be on alert. Too bad because I really could use the money.
Scam letter offering a fake inheritance to me based on my Asian last name and assumed “nationality”
November 11, 2025 at 1:10 AM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Meta suggests this AI version of an old photo of mine but in addition to it’s inability to render fingers, Facebook seems unable to comprehend the crucial detail.
Two photos, one of my middle finger pointed at Trump tower, the other an AI render without Trump Tower.
November 1, 2025 at 8:51 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Thanks to the guy on YouTube with the advanced toilet plunger technique, because now I don’t have to buy a toilet auger and a shop vac and spend the day taking out my kids’ toilet.
Rey Mysterio action figure on the rim of a toilet.
October 26, 2025 at 7:16 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
This king. Fight fascism.
Martin Luther king jr.
October 18, 2025 at 4:36 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
This king. No others.
King Harley Race, pro wrestler.
October 18, 2025 at 4:33 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Another broadside, this one I made for GVSU Poetry Night with Tyehimba Jess this week.
Broadside for “Mercy” by Tyehimba Jess, the poem with a heart, some vines and flowers.
October 17, 2025 at 2:06 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
I made this limited edition broadside of one of my favorite stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell for her reading and craft talk at GVSU today.
Broadside for “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem” by Bonnie Jo Campbell. White text over a picture of a drill and some construction debris.
October 7, 2025 at 11:33 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
What a blast, getting to visit BGSU to see my old friend and poetry co-conspirator Amorak Huey and his amazing students (championship edition) to talk about poetry. Now driving back to Michigan where I am going to hug my kids until they tell me to stop.
Two poetry books and the BGSU sign. A poetry book and the Waffle House sign.
October 3, 2025 at 3:43 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
When my sister visited us last summer she brought a motley assortment of our childhood toys. Now my kids play with them. Anyways, happy May the 4th everyone.
Star Wars toys.
May 4, 2025 at 8:49 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
My kids are on Spring Break so today we went to the GR Public Museum and I saw this taxidermy display & thought about how much I miss some things I gave up 5 years ago, when we found out we were having twins. For the best I know, & it was a lot of work, but I miss running a litmag.
#iykyk #waxwing
April 10, 2025 at 11:33 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
I’m not at AWP this year so instead of a photo of me with my favorite writers at some cool place in LA, here’s a selfie of me and the megasloth that hangs out near my camp in Fallout 76.
Photo of me and a megasloth in Fallout 76.
March 29, 2025 at 9:27 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Happy first day of Spring everyone.
iPhone weather forecast predicting wintry temperatures and snow.
March 20, 2025 at 4:19 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
My favorite books of poems have this way of reminding me anew why I love them every time I revisit them. We’re reading Good Bones by Maggie Smith in my poetry class this week and this poem “Heart” has me right where it wants me.
“Heart” by Maggie Smith A child of, say, six knows you’re not the shape she’s learned to make by drawing half along a fold, cutting, then opening. Where do you open? Where do you carry your dead? There’s no locket for that—hinged, hanging on a chain that greens your throat. And the dead inside you, don’t you hear them breathing? You must have a hole they can press their gray lips to. If you open— when you open—will we find them folded inside? In what shape? I mean what cut shape is made whole by opening? I mean besides the heart. Cover of Good Bones by Maggie Smith.
March 12, 2025 at 5:52 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Still one of my favorite poems Waxwing ever published.
waxwingmag.org/items/issue1...
Screenshot of the opening to “I Would Like to Tell the President to Eat a Dick in a Non-Homophobic Way” by Kendra DeColo.
February 17, 2025 at 5:18 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
I love this poem “Interlude: Ron Jeremy Film or Kid’s Show We Watched in the 80s” from Kendra DeColo’s book MY DINNER WITH RON JEREMY. My poetry class was tickled and horrified which means that they get it, I think.
Photo of the poem “Interlude: Ron Jeremy Film or Kid’s TV Show We Watched in the 80s” from Kendra DeColo’s book MY DINNER WITH RON JEREMY.
February 13, 2025 at 2:05 AM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
This week I’m trying to write new poems and keep coming back to this poem by Larry Levis that I love. Maybe it will help you write some poems too.
The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. BY LARRY LEVIS At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street Was brightly lit, the opossum would take A few steps forward, then back away from the breath Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars Would approach, as if to help it somehow. It would lift its black lips & show them The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors, Teeth that went all the way back beyond The flames of Troy & Carthage, beyond sheep Grazing rock-strewn hills, fragments of ruins In the grass at San Vitale. It would back away Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could Sever it completely from the wrist in forty. There was nothing to be done for it. Someone Or other probably called the LAPD, who then Called Animal Control, who woke a driver, who Then dressed in mailed gloves, the kind of thing Small knights once wore into battle, who gathered Together his pole with a noose on the end, A light steel net to snare it with, someone who hoped The thing would have vanished by the time he got there.
January 19, 2025 at 12:53 AM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Love this poem “The Beauty of the Backyard Wrestling League” by Quinn Carver Johnson from their book THE PERFECT BASTARD.
Full text of the poem “The Beauty of the Backyard Wrestling League” by Quinn Carver Johnson. The book cover of THE PERFECT BASTARD by Quinn Carver Johnson, a pro wrestling action figure on a pinkish background.
December 22, 2024 at 6:42 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
The Cranky Poets shirt started as a Twitter joke a while back with Kelli Russell Agodon and Mitch Nobis about punk band names and poets being cranky.
Photo of a shirt featuring a flaming skull and a typewriter and the words “the Cranky Poets.”
December 10, 2024 at 6:27 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
The Brew and Forge bookfair is open again this year with signed copies of The Dead Wrestler Elegies and many other awesome books. Proceeds go to Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Open until 12/3. See link in bio.
The Dead Wrestler Elegies at Brew & Forge sales page. The Brew and Forge Bookfair promo graphic: open 11/20 - 12/3.
November 29, 2024 at 5:03 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
“No buckskin would mention this, no faux Susie’s captures / what cannot be claimed. Just this once, he says, / do a little rain dance. You are trying to say your own name, / but can’t pronounce it”

My copy of CLOUD MISSIVES by Kenzie Allen falls open to this poem a lot. It’s a really good one.
Text of “Dress Like Pocahontas, Then Let’s Make Love” from CLOUD MISSIVES by Kenzie Allen. Cover of CLOUD MISSIVES by Kenzie Allen. 3d polygons on a shelf tinted blue.
November 26, 2024 at 1:30 AM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
I love this one, “A Poem in Which I Grab My Poverty Like that Jaguar in the Video Grabbed a Crocodile Out of the River and Carried It into the Jungle” from WHERE YOU COME FROM IS GONE by Annie Woodford.
“A Poem in Which I Grab My Poverty Like that Jaguar in the Video Grabbed a Crocodile Out of the River and Carried It into the Jungle” by Annie Woodford. My daughter said You think it’s the wind, but it’s the highway. Pot smoke wafts from a passing car, caress of funk and fable, though, at eleven, I don’t think she knows the scent. We walk the grounds of the school she was zoned to attend, the highway and Walmart still visible through woven plastic fence. We toss the half-deflated hearts of playground balls back into the packed dirt yard. I find a child’s sweater on the gravel, vinyl butterflies pressed across its chest, its thin acrylic knit wet with dew. I drape it across the gate, bright totem of all the love I send and forsake. My daughter grabs my phone and poses her face— seeking her own beauty in her smile—in front of our distant mountains, egalitarian in their soft pink excess, planes descending from places we never have the money to visit, wingtips luminous with low sun, while all over town tonight people sleep in their own piss because Medicaid must make profit. A coyote tried to hide behind the trashcan at the jail today but it was shot. Inmates used to shout from out the window slots until those slots were sealed. You’d think it was catcalls or something unspeakable, but it was really the wind, if God is the wind and sometimes takes the form of human voices.
November 19, 2024 at 12:45 AM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
In the classroom for the first time since the election. “Dead Stars” by Ada Limón seemed like a good way to start today’s discussion of The Carrying. I’m grateful for this poem, for so many poems.
DEAD STARS by Ada Limón Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing. Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us. Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year. I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying. We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder. It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations. And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx. But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising— to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward what’s larger within us, toward how we were born. Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder? What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No. No, to the rising tides. Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land? What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain for the safety of others, for earth, if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified, if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds, rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?
November 12, 2024 at 4:32 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
This contest ends Sunday. Send me something to read. @fracturedlit.bsky.social

fracturedlit.com/fractured-li...
White text on blue background with planets. Fractured Lit Chapbook Contest poster. Deadline April 24.
April 13, 2024 at 3:03 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Thanks for everything to Chuck Carlise of Ashland Poetry Press and the people at Ashland University for hosting me and my poems last night. I’m grateful for the hospitality and audience.
The dead wrestler elegies held up next to an Ashland University Eagles shirt in yellow on purple.
April 4, 2024 at 8:12 PM
toddkaneko.bsky.social
Happy Sunday.
A gif of the Easter Bunny and the Macho Man Randy Savage.
March 31, 2024 at 2:25 PM