A Suplex That Has No Name
I’ve been dreaming about love and destruction
and athletic tape soaked in blood
and a flying, belly-to- back, tree-of- woe suplex
and how there’s no love for the jobber
lying broken in the center of the ring
too filled with dignity and love
to stay down, show hurt, get help
instead to slink quietly away
below the bottom rope, to the floor
to limp-crawl toward the curtain
in the shadow-vacuum of firework fountains and cheers
I’ve been dreaming about broken bulbs and folding chairs,
banquet halls and highway lines
and a blank space
where memories used to be
I remember a house stripped of copper
and the rituals of happy and sad
and the way my shadow looks
under someone else’s lights
send me home
wrapped in barbed wire
falling through a steel cage skyscraper
a hundred stories high
to a pyramid of flaming tables
covered in thumbtacks and broken glass
and pyrotechnic incineration.
Cheer for the Jobber, for he gave his all.
Matthew W. Sandvik is a writer, painter, film-school graduate, photographer, death metal loving husband-dad curmudgeon.
