Two Poems
by W. Todd Kaneko
RICKY STEAMBOAT
The night he returns to pro wrestling,
Ricky Steamboat perches on the turnbuckle
with his dragon crown and fire spouting
from his lips. Then tiger claw, spinning
karate kick, flying tackle for the 1-2-3,
and this not is my father’s favorite wrestler,
this oriental spectacle, Chinese cosplay
with a plastic Halloween hi-yah. No—
I told my father my favorite was Randy
Savage, the Macho Man, all beard
bluster and oily snarl: he said what
about Ricky Steamboat—humble baby
face for the heartland and the prettiest arm
drag in America, a heart full of Hawaiian
fire and flowers blooming dangerous
around his neck. What about
Ricky Steamboat, a man with eyes
angled like mine, who could have lived
in my father’s neighborhood, tumbled
with him in the dojo on Saturday nights.
Did he know noodles and weird sealife
at his grandmother’s dinner table,
the aunties clucking tongues at him
while the uncles played cards.
What about my father in his twenties,
his poems pure and seething, my father
holding his parents like he could
save them from history, my father
with the Pacific Ocean flooding
his eyes and the Idaho wind freezing
his lungs, my father now a spirit,
bodiless and still whispering God
damn what about Ricky Steamboat.
MAGNIFICENT MURACO
I am thirteen in 1983, Saturday morning
and the Magnificent Muraco eats a meatball
sandwich while clobbering some poor slob
on television. His manager Captain Lou claps
ringside while the announcer marvels
at the brutality laugh at the damage
he causes while eating his lunch.
The Magnificent One takes a bite, flexes
his chest and smashes that dude square
in the kisser—then a swig of Coca Cola
before jamming his head into the canvas
and the next time I see this match, I will
be middle aged, hypertensive, my back
permanently kinked—like my father’s body
while we watch wrestling at his house.
He will stop smoking one day; a black belt
in Aikido, he will say to me we can fight
without hurting anyone, the same way
he tells me wrestling is fake as Captain Lou
slips on a meatball. I will be close to fifty
when my father dies. I will be making
toast for my son and collapse when
I get the news and why can’t I be thirteen
again, Muraco chewing with his mouth
open, my father next to me on the floor.
Why can’t the heart beat without feeling
beaten, our bodies exit the world
without leaving a scar.
W. Todd Kaneko is the author of This is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies, Championship Edition (New Michigan Press 2023). He is co-author with Amorak Huey of Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), and Slash / Slash (Diode Editions 2021). His writing can be seen in Poetry, Alaskan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, The Normal School, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University and lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He believes in pineapple on pizza, staycations, and dates anywhere are cool as long as he gets to be with his wife.
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