It all started when the Rockers broke up
and Shawn Michaels flung Marty Jannetty
through the Barber Shop window.
Small rivulets of blood pool
over the broken shards.
We didn’t know at the time
that the bloodspill was intended,
carrying the weight of the storyline.
It was the first time I saw someone
bleed on television, and I thought
pain could only be felt
when you were cut open.
The organisation wants less spandex,
more chairs to the head, more guys in denim
and black, police cruiser blue and interstate orange,
crime scene tape replacing the ropes.
I tie football socks around my knees
and elbow drop pillows, wave my arms
when hitting the mat like I’m wading
through water. My classmates
lock their wrists into an X and shout
suck it at the authority figures in their lives,
sometimes, too, at the girls they like.
My future plans are shifting away
from bending someone up in a suplex.
My body is still a spectacle, but that spectacle
is the Hell in a Cell match between
Mankind and The Undertaker.
The violence was for our entertainment,
it dulled our senses
to the violence that was coming
in waves as we got older.
No pinfalls in the real world.
Submissions are sometimes optional.
Wrestling with mania
teaches you that a victory
by countout is still a victory,
even if it won’t win you
the title belt.
An Inventory
1. I sensed my transition, my becoming into something
2. otherworldly. We spent hours on the phone, talking
3. about you, about your dog’s fur, encrusted with shit,
4. about climbing down from the ledge and getting into the bath
5. or outside to touch some grass. Nobody ever says thank you.
6. I would’ve broken my own rib to create you again –
7. shards, lint, fractions and smithereens whittled from
8. the thrust of my own body. I am so tired. Your weight
9. forced me down like you’d left a brick on the accelerator
10. and the only thing I have left of you is your underwear
11. in my drawer and an archived WhatsApp history
12. that spans our orbit. I’m too scared to look at it
13. and too scared to throw it away. Even when we ate
14. spiced pear ice cream looking out to sea
15. on a pearly beach I knew that only
16. two outcomes existed. Only one happened.
Steven Green
Steven Green is a London-based poet from Birmingham. His work has featured in publications such as Bruiser, Clarion, and Gold Dust magazine, as well as in anthologies from Broken Sleep Books and Morocco Bound. He is currently working on his debut pamphlet.