an interview with iris appelquist
hard launch with cum and funeral talk just to say that life is fast i am ok i do apologize but i am not like sorry at all not at all at all like
its hard to get away from once you get to a good spot with why its best to get away from it
there are all the things and all the names of things
there is a word in german for a moment of recognition that one’s universe is just one among all the 9 billion other universes a special belongingness of solitudes small quarantines secreted worlds precious as they are vernacular try looking that up
i’ll wait for you to find that words are made up
i don’t have anything to say about peace or finding it and baby you don’t have anything to hear about it either
i’m guessing an educated guess
which becomes hard to track because arguing peace is arguing knowledge and you cant argue knowledge with someone who doesn’t believe in your capacity to possess it i am painting you you with broad blind and uncaring strokes forgive me baby
especially considering
—iris appelquist
theres a new an unused condom in my coat pocket because i had to fish it out of the laundry and i happened to have hung my coat on the bathrobe hook right next to the laundry because i have executive functioning issues still stealed in its gold wrapper i balled it up tight in my hand and probably was really obvious about trying to conceal shoving my fist into the coat pocket so its still in there and for a coupla days now
why it is a big deal that there is a condom in the laundry why it is still in my coat pocket why i hid it there am explaining this instead of taking it out of there and forgetting that it happened in the first place why i wake into nightmares why i make them real why i’m waiting for an occasion to take out the unused condom from my coat pocket
i have an ex he was nobody baby i promise who carried wet wipes on his person for reasons one of which was copping semen after fucking off his body and maybe yours if you could speak up quick enough anyway theres a mostly empty packet of wet wipes underneath my bed for now almost 4 years why i don’t even know how the condom got in the washer is because
i am currently 42 years old and i have a big problem
—iris appelquist
now when i tell you baby that i took a job that’s true the hospital system would not have given it to me if they believed i wanted to have it because the function of a system is its purpose read suffering though the trough is overfull many must proof for the truth and solve for the lie i wasn’t
interested in pulling anybody else’s weight and anybody was well happy to be dragged but i should have stayed and let my tusks troll a little longer along the floor of whatever pit i was availed turning up left and right sharper and heavier with each next recognition a new hire photo obvious compared to an annual an admin transparent next to a LPN the teeth the collar light the
things you can take next to the things you have but i guess i didn’t
feel like it was all really worth taking i quick became a sow hoary and a boor so manic on the incessancy of alive people i forgot my name for a moment baby yes but i was just counting down the hours to christmas anyway
the next coming of jesus will be a new strain of ebola baby
—iris appelquist
iris appelquist has been writing and performing in Kansas City for more than 20 years. Five collections of her poetry have been published by independent presses local to Kansas City and the midwest (Blunt Trauma, 2009; BRIAR, 2012; where we were we were there, 2015; NICE FEELINGS, 2017–all from Spartan Press; a banner year, 2018–from EMP Books), and she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2021. Her current works are experimental in composition, form, and exhibition; her poetry performance creates time-based and reflexive experiences that aim to challenge expectations of poetry and poetry performance. appelquist provides both clues and barriers that work to imbue the acerbic, quaint, electric, and desolate voices of her poems with a nonmaterial environment the audience must navigate. As a Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident (2025-2027), she works to further expand the forms and media that contain and transmit her voice. In September of 2025, she released an EP of time-based poem iterations called BURGEON, available on bandcamp.com. See also https://linktr.ee/irisappelquist.
Add comment