The three elements in the title of this work—cryptids, kaiju, and corn—foreshadow the recurring motifs contained within it. [1] Cryptids are a class of legendary beasts whose existence is contested. Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are prime examples. Kaiju is a Japanese term for extra-large monsters, such as Godzilla. Corn is an indigenous American stout grass row crop which produces kernels arranged in female inflorescences known as ears. It is cultivated widely, especially in the Midwest, the contemporary setting where each of the seventy-seven poems and micro-stories in this endearing collection take place.
While the entries collected in Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn are primarily concerned with cryptids and only secondarily with kaiju and maize, all of the entries, to greater or lesser degrees, are about place: the (mostly) flat, landlocked Midwest. It is flyover country, this place we call home. It is, as Logan Garner emphasizes in his micro-story, “a place between places. A border with a thinness to it.” (p. 110) Often, as Curtis A. Deeter notes, it is where “[t]he closest neighborhood was a mile away.” (p. 114) Its isolation breeds monsters of varied types.
Let us consider the trio of cryptids, kaiju, and corn in reverse order, beginning with corn. Within this collection, the maize is both relatively plentiful and, despite its familiarity, often menacing. Consider “The Cornfather,” a micro-tale by Tyler Stallings. [2] In this story, a drought has stricken the land and the cornstalks have shrunken into dried-up husks. The crop is fading, but there is one chance left for the fields belonging to the narrator’s father: a Frankensteinian GMO, “[a] plastic sack, no label, stolen from the lab where his cousin cleans floors.” In it is seed corn of questionable origins. Under the light of the moon, the father/farmer desperately plants the stolen seeds. There’s nothing with which to water them, not even any mechanized equipment with which to plant them. Instead, he plants each kernel by hand, pressing them into the soil. And by dawn, the field has come to life.
The predictability of what comes next fails to mute its impact; in fact, it heightens it. “The air smells wrong—wet metal, overripe fruit.” The stolen mutated corn which the planter has brought to life is ghastly and animated. It speaks—first whispers, then vocalizations. The ears split open to reveal teeth. The roots become tentacles of sorts. Mayhem ensues.
Alternatively, let us examine another very short corn-themed story, “The Family Farm” by Seán Betzer. Here, the corn is not gruesome. Instead, it acts as a mystical assistant to help a mother locate her kidnapped child, who is hidden somewhere within the endless rows of tassels. When the mother pleads for the corn to help her, the fields themselves comply, bending and bowing, creating a path through the darkness. The distraught mother follows the trail and finds her son, along with the kidnapper, ensnared in the grip of a scarecrow. But the scarecrow—like the corn—haunts the farm in a very peculiar way. Sometimes, so long as a given individual does not mistreat them, the haunts help—though they never totally shed their creepiness. If someone misuses the spiritual forces embodied in the crops and the soil, however, the outcome turns grotesque.
As for the kaiju, your reviewer located a solitary example, but it’s a whopper of a poem in which Godzilla shows up to dance at a pow wow. [3] Actually, the singularity of the example tracks. One encounters relatively few of the Rodan, King Ghidora, or Gamera on the Midwestern plains insofar as our turtles tend toward the modest and our moths, generally, are quite diminutive. As a result, when one does bump into a kaiju, they’re bound to make an impression. Indeed, such is the case with Juan Manuel Pérez’s “Godzilla at the Pow Wow.” (p. 78) It impresses.
Godzilla, you see, frequents pow wows as a way to “cool off” after one of his gigantic battles; after “messing up a place.” We learn that Godzilla has just concluded a bout with Astro-Monster. The poem begins and alternates with the rhythmic pounding of the drums. The sacred elements and prayer contained within the dance are preserved—even emphasized—despite the introduction of the incongruous Japanese goliath. Even as the poet concedes (winking) that Godzilla “must be part NDN,” he performs a neat trick that avoids camp:
drumbeat, drumbeat, drum
a deep rhythmic rumbling sound
music from the heart
The narrative concludes with a hint of the hallucinatory psychedelia inherent in the images presented by the poet:
pow wows aren’t the same
without a kaiju stomp dance
peyote puff clouds
Finally, to the third element conjured by the collection’s, title, cryptids. They are populous, to put it mildly. They are multitudinous. They’re everywhere. There are Hogdags and Wendigo. There is the Ohio Grassman. There are Wallachs and frogmen. There is a Squonk. There is a Dogman. There are no small number of Bigfeet. Even a Chameleyote makes an appearance.
The legendary status of many of these lusus naturae lend the images a certain kind of locality which underscores their familiarity to those of us that live here in the Midwest. They may be monsters, but they’re our monsters. We know of them, but our knowledge is shrouded and incomplete. John Tyler Leonard stresses the blind spots in our grasp of unknowable things in “The Harvest Men.” (p. 3) He asks, rhetorically:
Did you know they sweat?
Did you know how much they sicken our summers?
How sweet they are on the breeze?
Many of such local beasts lurk in the water. They are swimmers. Interestingly, cryptids seem to prefer freshwater to salt, which makes them a peculiarly Midwestern phenomena. Yet ages ago, the Midwest was a prehistoric ocean bed, a seafloor over which swarmed toothy mosasauri and carnivorous plesiosauri. With climate change, sea levels rise and fields long dry turn back to wetlands, ruining roads and drowning soybeans. As a result, long-slumbering fossilized swimmers are roused.
In Tyler Stallings’s “The Seep,” a farmer by the name of Brady mourns his beans rotting in black water. (p. 89) His truck skids “in a soil turned to something else.” The soil has become “soft, tidal, waking up.” A tremor betrays the waking of something segmented: “Eyes like seed pearls, too many, too small. A slow twitch in its limbs. Feeling for a world it lost.” Now technically, I suppose, a mosasaur is neither corn, nor kaiju, nor cryptid, but this story still feels perfectly placed in this collection. [4]
A second example of a sea creature with questionable cryptid bona fides can be found in “Daytime Hauntings” by John Tyler Leonard. In this story, a colorless but tragic day is described in environmental terms. (p. 20) Leonard presents a species such as the Asian carp as invasive fauna, which in turn displaces yet another such species:
a pale, ugly fish that sucks the algae off
a paler, somehow even uglier fish
In the real world, Chinese carp of this sort have indeed disrupted the food web of Midwestern lakes and rivers. The otherness of something—its lack of fit, or perhaps its unordinariness—can be, in its peculiar effects, a kind of horrifying. Similarly, in Liam Espinoza-Zewmlicka’s “Little Lost Lake Monster,” that which is neither man nor beast is more frightening than a mere beast. The horror of that which defies categorization is hinted at in “Little Lost Lake Monster” by Liam Espinoza-Zemlicka when a character quips of a freshwater seamonster, “God look at her. She’s not a fish or really an aquatic mammal either.” (p. 72) A second character confirms: “We’re face to face with something that defies categorization … ”
Lake monsters abound here. Nor does the fact that lakes are frozen half the year lessen the potential peril of a leviathan emerging from the pools and ponds spotting our geography. In Topher Nelson’s “Pepie,” a wizened character in a wintery landscape such as may have been conceived by Stephen King, is described. (p. 82) We see a shack and inside, an elderly man on an upturned pail next to a hole he has drilled in the ice. He holds a rod and a reel in one hand and a bottle in the other. He’s there more to sip than fish:
[T]o catch a fish isn’t the goal
Of dropping a line into the hole.
It’s a meditation, retreat, a time to think
A time to be quiet, a time to drink.
And this fisherman’s had a few
So as to not completely spoil the ending to this poem, let us just say that it turns into quite a fish story when the old drunk finally senses a nibble on his line.
One quibble: A popular device nowadays is to inject a monster into prose or poem by means of the narrator herself assuming the role. It’s an effective technique if not overused for this—for this reviewer, the monster-in-the-first-person routine became occasionally trite. One particularly eloquent utilization of the ploy, however, takes place in “The Loveland Frogman” by Mia Dalia, in which the eponymous frogman cautions other webbed men on how to fit in by means of a disguise. They need only masquerade as “an iguana without a tail.” (p. 71) The narrator assures the reader:
[C]lose your eyes, I’ll have you convinced.
Kiss me, darling, I’m a proper frog prince.
Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn concludes with seven one-page discussion topics keyed to particular selections, whether poems or micro-stories. Each of these prompts introduces a quote or two followed by references to the themes of two to four poems or stories, concluding with thought-provoking questions and/or writing prompts. Oftentimes, in books like this one, the inclusion of prompts and discussion topics (useful for workshops, classrooms, or book clubs) comes off as tacked-on and superfluous, but the ones here are sensible and stimulating.
Indeed, it occurs to me (as a former public school teacher) that the tone and content of this book are harrowing enough to interest advanced middle school or high school students but not so horrific as to offend parents. The local flavor of certain poems and stories may be of greater relevance to students living in those communities. The discussion points could make for lively class discussions or essay assignments, however, even outside of the Midwest.
Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn, then, represents a skillfully edited assortment of peculiar tales and images, all of them Midwestern, some of them provocative, and others quite delightful. The variety of voices contained here lends to surprises and suspense—even occasional humor and irony. The arrangement of these cryptozoological entries is thoughtful and charming. It’s an enjoyable read, never base nor gory, but occasionally unnerving … in a good way.
Endnotes
[1] Additional recurring ornaments include bones shotguns, pumpkins, and (predictably) soybeans. [return]
[2] The title, “The Cornfather,” hints at a popular culture slyness with a nod to the Godfather trilogy (1972-1990). Given its horror-tones, it cannot help but also reference the Children in the Corn franchise (1998-2023). [return]
[3] To be fair, there is also a monster in the form of PTSD threatening a veteran in a Chicago Veterans’ Affairs waiting room with “a Godzilla-size mouth” portrayed in “Mammoth” by Ron Riekki. (p. 105) But the monster in said micro-story is not a kaiju. It is, in fact, war. [return]
[4] A plesiosaur also appears in Brittany Redd’s “The Flint Hills Have Eyes,” though it emerges not from the earth but from the stars. [return]