five poems
by Mark Wadley
Skipping
(after Kurt Steiner)
Coming out here / for no reason at all
Coming out here / to look at the water
Coming out here / to heave / a smooth flat rock
Not just any rock / but one from the bucket I keep
in the Ranger / the bucket / of good ass rocks
sometimes I come out here / to look for good ass rocks
the best ones / weigh between four and seven ounces
they feel the best in my hands / don’t put much strain
on my creaky elbow / I learned my lesson
after a few years of lobbing nine- / ten-ouncers / trying
to see if the heavies would go farther
but they just wore me out faster
Coming out here / to heave / a smooth flat rock
is the most important thing I’ve ever done
my legacy eighty-eight skips / out into the placid waters
of the Allegheny Reservoir / the cascading ripples
a moiré labyrinth / spreading out to the shore
a series of galaxies / colliding and fading
into the background radiation from whence they came
These are the things I think about / when I come out here
there’s so much to be done of course / but I don’t come out here
to get things done / that’s not what coming out to the water is about
This beautiful thing happens / when the rock leaves my fingers
that moment of release / anything could go wrong
but I’ll know it’s gone right / the skips already on the books
the moment that rock flies over the water
They keep telling me to film everything / never know
when a record might get broken / they say / and I do
love to break those records / mine / Big Dave’s / anybody’s
but I’ll save that energy / for the championships
Coming out here / to think / about a million things
the weight of the entire universe / in my wind up
In that quarter second / between the rock leaving my fingers
and hitting the water / I don’t think about anything at all
every single thing poured / into the lake / by seven ounces of slate
This is what it’s all about / me alone with everything
and a rock / and a lake / and an unending stream of ripples
ebbing up and down the shoreline / this is the only thing I really need
the groceries can wait / the leak above the toilet / can wait
those aren’t the reasons we’re here / we’re the reasons they’re here
these rocks can’t skip themselves / you know
I know you know / sometimes though / I wish
you would have stayed / to throw a few with me
you know I never cared / if you were any good
To the Rabbit in the Dog’s Mouth
I have killed animals before / a kid with a gun crouched in the woods
or a fallow cornfield / I left that kid behind / hung up and dusty in a basement
next to the shotgun my father bought / the day I was born
She didn’t know / how it would affect any of us / didn’t know the small bones
would bend and break / didn’t know how to wait / to go back outside
and find you again / do what she does to any toy
If I had a rifle I’d know how to end your pain / the fastest way
the most comfortable / for me at least
I don’t know how it would feel for you
You will find your way into the shallow grave / she’s been digging for months
a dirty divot your small body only half-fills / you will watch me wide-eyed
when I come / to make sure you’re still breathing
I will call in / say I’ll be late / a minor emergency
when I tell the story no one will understand
how scared / how helpless / I called every rescue in fifty miles
leaving messages / waiting / I spend so much of my life
knowing what to do
When I come out with the box / you will crawl halfway across the yard
scurrying limp-leggedly / underneath the lettuce planter / then out
through a hole in the fence / I follow / stepping gently / drape the towel over
your scream cuts through the morning / and I wince as I lift your light everything
At the rescue center you will stare at me / letting your legs move
in the man’s sure hands / not paralyzed he says
round of steroids / he says / I’ll go back to my car and sob
not for your pain / but the way it changed four hours of a morning
I never expected to handle / something hurt / but still scrabbling for life
How the Mind Races the Body
Maybe there’s something in physics / a formula
or theorem / or whatever / this isn’t my area
to explain how the mind races / the body
and always wins / even tied / ankle to raw ankle
arms outstretched / to the finish line
the body just beginning to wake / and move
its rusty bulk over the start / the rest left between
stretched like a sheet / a ghost wavering / flickering
from being to non-being / and back / and back
They never taught me how to be alive / never handed out
a worksheet to figure / the difference between winning
and crash landing / is how many broken bones I can bear
Danielson
Best of all wrestlers / you float above your body / as it takes
its punishment / your mind a phantom limb / but you feel every blow
feel alive as your pale chest wells red / your eye throbs
your head and neck a ledger / of mistakes
You could have retired forever / saved yourself from yourself
your bloody compulsion / your battle against your own spinal column
one you could only lose / but the ring calls / home ancestral
your legacy of greatness / a litany of broken bones
For years I heard your name / hushed tones imagining
the things you could do / if they would only let you
in a video twenty years grainy / you arc toward the man / gracefully
drive a knee into his head / it looks so real / it must be
Something in the way / you do this incredible / terrible thing
the beautiful awful theater / of the body / of the mind / of the mob
something says / you have found the joy of creation / and execution
of throwing yourself bodily / into the wreck / of becoming the wreck
surfacing with a grim smile / not safe / not whole / but complete
To David Arquette
One-Time WCW World Heavyweight Champion
You didn’t want it of course / no true fan would want to see
some Hollywood interloper lift / the big gold belt
to hang it / from this son of an actor’s / scrawny shoulder
All for the sake of corporate synergy / to shill a shit movie
unremembered / even ironically / for another twenty years
You didn’t mean to be the nail in this coffin
one of a few last gasps / from a dying brand
I guess I don’t know what you wanted
maybe a legacy / you’d only dreamed
from the living room rug / a chance
to hold the belt / you’d watched heroes defend
a sign to the world / you were meant to be there
the lights shining down / bright and hard
But instead you got an albatross / your reward
unbridled scorn / from everyone around you
I’m sorry / they left you out there
to be crucified / without a gospel
Photo of Mark Wadley
BIO: Mark Wadley is a Baltimore-based writer, artist and publisher. His work has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, scaffold, Maximum Rocknroll and others. He is the founding editor of BRUISER.