MATTHEW WALSH

I’m not a diehard fan of men and their performance
of brute strength. My father erected two wooden poles
in July that faced each other in duel for eternity, like
a father and like a son. He would lift weights in the
basement with a garbage bag under his clothes because
he was told it increased results, made you lose love handles.
Describe me as soft but also, I plan for my future self
in having just this week extracted my own third molar
to save myself money in the long run. I crushed it,
the ache, with a sleeper-hold of Tylenol 3 and TV.
A man with a bruise is a fighter or a recipient of abuse.
To be exact, my first idea about male gender stems
from televised wrestling, costume and mask. Soliloquy
spoken in booty shorts and gold chain on topics of desire,
regret, reading like an intro to Shakespearian tragedy
was just a Monday night. My favourite male role
model was the snake, Revelations, for I believed
the python was used by my father to keep me quiet
just as Jake the Snake used it to intimidate a rival.
There was much theatre, development in persona
and ultimatum, we watched men wrestle men
in passionate, curious poses and at times with
tenderness. One summer, I stumbled upon an orgy
the men in the forest, bodies reclined in sunlight
like subjects of a renaissance painting, the fine
detail of a mouth licking an armpit. They’re prolific
lovers, and understand what is human can’t be
defined in any simple act. My father will have
something for Jake the Snake he can’t explain.
His moves or charisma an attraction there are no
words for, but my god, you should see my dad
and his final finishing move, finally, the clothesline.

The holidays are the time I remember my father
most, though he is still here, attached to the land
line telephone with an especially long cord.
He lifted me above his head like a dumbbell,
held me there in the twinkling light of the tree,
it was just myself and him. I could not imagine
being him, it is hard. A clear memory kept by me
him showing his teeth at my sister’s wedding, even
then a moment of learning what he had lost.
My father shoveling the driveway of snow,
possibly the only beautifully constructed, carefully
crafted sentence he had ever written down.
There are pictures of him trying to change me
on a poker table, a cigarette in his teeth, a room
clouded by the smoke of several relatives.
He would drink and become a blur to me,
someone who I have exchanged a text once
a year with in very early April, when
there is plenty of chances to be renewed.