Three pro wrestling poems // Guillermo Rebollo Gil

Rick Rude vs. Barry Windham

[WCW Saturday Night, 11/7/92]

Windham wears cowboy boots

and plain black trunks. He traps

Rude in a bear hug.

You imagine them kissing,

but that can never happen.

Rude rakes his eyes and escapes.

He makes a muscle for the crowd.

Then he delivers a neck breaker

and attempts a pin, but he only

gets a two count.

Windham gets up and catches Rude

in a sleeper hold. Again he escapes.

They exchange blows to the head.

They fall out of the ring.

You imagine them later that night, alone.

Rude watches over Windham as he sleeps.

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Abdullah the Butcher

[3PW, 12/28/02]

Abdullah won after Bigelow drove

into a piece of plywood face-first.

There were no special stipulations for the bout.

The loser, however, would die

from a drug overdose four years after.

Abdullah’s real name is Larry.

Bam Bam, like The Flinstones.

Sadistic Steve Strong vs. TNT

[WWC, 1989]

That was the year I turned ten.

The ring ropes were covered with barbed wire.

Strong bit the wire.

It’s like having an adjective for a last name.

Back then I didn’t know what ‘sadistic’ meant.

I just knew I wasn’t strong.

//

Guillermo Rebollo Gil’s poems have appeared in Fence, Mandorla, The Caribbean Writer and Anthurium. He is the author of Fire Island