In “Help Wanted, Items 7a & b,” I envisioned an exhibit of a past world in which yokai, demons, and monsters were all very real–and had been part of the everyday world prior to a great cataclysm in 1896. The poems are in the shape and style of florid and emphatic Victorian advertisements, and supposedly found in London in the aftermath of the disaster. I imagined that in the months leading up to the horrific event, nightmares, especially in young people, increased dramatically. In response, dream magicians, or oneiromancers, put out help wanted ads for Japanese Baku, yokai who eat nightmares.
As someone with chronic night terrors and nightmares, I became fond of the baku, which is usually described as shaped like a tapir with a longer nose. Derived from the Chinese mo, baku were first described in English by Lafcadio Hearn.
