More selections from Wrestling Light

Midlife (originally published in The Alternative)

It is midlife. You are between the blank, unknown

moment when you dive, no, are pushed into the black

pool that drains toward Heaven and the trip you made down

your mother’s body where your first stranger slapped your back

and handed you to a weak protector. The frown

you give your children does not yet come with the tact

your grandfather has painfully learned, and the sounds

the kids hear you make are from a familiar act.

You can’t watch television without complaining,

but whoever loses your remote is in for

an hour of your angry silence. But you hear

yourself telling people your age now, explaining

the shortness of breath, temper, and joy. And the more

you sleep, the less you dream, the more you have to fear.

A Poem About Being Fat (originally published in Our Journey)

If striped shirts and ties and jackets

can’t hide this preacher’s belly,

then t-shirts will certainly reveal

the sin which causes bulges.

No one needs to see me

wolf down eight tacos.

Of course they give the fat teachers classes

on the third floor.

And in this building the elevator

is more dangerous than the heart attack

my climbing could precipitate.

And even though I exercise every day

I can see hear my labored breathing

echoing in the stairwells,

and as I answer questions in class.

At my age, one is supposed to have privileges:

you settle down, get a job,

land a wife, make some babies.

Then you get to let yourself go,

throw discipline out the same window

you stare through on cold days

as you look on the fading green

for the lithe child of the past.

Dream Fragments (originally published in Pudding Magazine)

I dreamed that I had gotten so fat

that a nerve had been pinched in my legs

and I couldn't move to save my life

or that of this person I wanted to impress.

She got to die, but I had to wake up.

I dreamed I had to go back to the fifth grade,

and in the bathroom I saw my head

full of grey hair in the mirror

but I wasn't the teacher.

In fact, I was the dumbest kid in class.

Everyone got to go to recess,

but I had to get out of bed and go to work.

I dreamed I forgot my own language,

but could speak French fluently

since I took it in college.

But I was surrounded by rednecks

and didn't even understand myself.

They got to make fun of me on television,

but I had to sit by myself and write this poem.

Grappling (originally published in Lynx Eye)

Back then, we knew wrestling was fake,

but hoped something about the struggle was real.

So just in case, we practiced on each other.

The iron claw seemed the ultimate weapon,

but even it could be broken.

I don't remember how.

Now, with breath like walls closing in

and the ceiling coming down,

finding out is more important than ever.

Bridge Over Lake Lavon

Across a drought-scarred lake I drive as sleep

invades and the effect of coffee dies

like the bare, winter-like branches once deep

beneath a blanket of God's tears and sighs.

A scavenging bird rests on a dark stump,

like me, watching the August fog at dawn

burn away like fires in a garbage dump,

he too tired to hunt, I too tired to yawn.

Oppressed by the news of the world, I turn

the radio off. "I am almost there,"

I think, "And there is nothing new to learn."

I'm near the end, close to shore, close to where

I'll open a hard door that will seem

like home, say a desperate prayer, and dream.