The Poet of the Week is W. Todd Kaneko, and I will be including poems from his book The Dead Wrestler Elegies, which is a collection Kaneko wrote about a sport/athletes that he loves--professional wrestling/wrestlers.
It may seem on odd choice, but the poems in this book are full of love and tragedy. They move me in a very deep way. They may not move you in the same way, but give them a chance.
Saint Marty is thankful tonight for poems about dead wrestlers.
Killer Kowalski and the Cauliflower Ear
by: W. Todd Kaneko
When I asked my father how a wrester
sheds fake blood, he said the best thing
Walter Kowalski ever did was break off
that chunk of Yukon Eric's ear. When I asked
if an ear could be reattached, my father
said they called him Killer after he laughed
at all that blood on the canvas.
The cauliflower ear is a brittle condition--
a gnarled badge for men who live by
the fist, who die when they can no longer hear
their names in mouths of women and children.
When I asked my father about my mother,
he explained how Killer Kowalski left
Jack Dempsey gasping on the floor
with a knee to the gut, how he attacked
a talk show comedian with his claw-hold
because he felt like it, how a blow to the head
can bloom thick with gore and cartilage.
Yukon Eric was a babyface for bloodthirsty
crowds, shot himself in a church parking lot
after his wife divorced him. Killer Kowalski
was the most hated man in wrestling,
attacked nightly by ladies with knives
and umbrellas. When I asked my father
about his life before my mother
left us, about those things a man needs
to know about his father before he dies,
he nodded, pretending he couldn't hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment