A Poem by Mairead Small Staid

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

A Wrestler’s Book of Saints

(i)

Track any madness back: it grows holy.
My sister holds a lighter to the pale,
thickened soles of her feet, but Columba — 
transcribing the Bible as invaders
swarmed the abbey walls — ran out of candles.
He found fresh wax in his left hand, lighting
each finger from the embers of the last.
What is the body but a body, you
might say. My sister knows better than that.
What is the body but a carnival
ride? What is the body but a long fall
or dive? If the soul is all that counts, why
sever hands & fingers, feet? Why keep them
precious in the reliquary, why kneel?

(ii)

Precious, in the reliquary, we kneel.
Track any madness back: it grows holy.
My sister breaks open holes in her hands,
but Francis bore stigmata too — the word
from the Greek, to mark. What is the body
but an ornament? What is the body
but a prize? At carnivals & wrestling
matches, a mark is a target, a fan,
someone who doesn’t know it’s fake. Or if
he understands that much, he doesn’t know
it’s also real. The wrestlers hide razor
blades in their wristbands, on their fingertips,
to open their own foreheads when they’re hit.
Blood pours from every homemade crown of thorns.

(iii)

Blood pours from every homemade crown of thorns,
seeps between bared & grinning teeth, but hey:
track any madness back, it grows holy.
The glow behind Columba’s head is his
own hand, alight. Who says we cannot make
ourselves into saints? The wrestlers are split
into parts: a heel, a face. The face stomps
the heel — these words grow strange in the ring, mean
other things; these parts are magnified, made
into wholes. What is the body but an
assortment? What is the body but shorn?
The wrestler grows his shining hair as long
as Samson’s was, before. Every strand is
oiled, as if he has just been baptized.

(iv)

Oiled — as if he has just been baptized — 
the wrestler has communion in a match.
Slap a match to oil & you get flame;
track any madness back, it grows holy.
We eat the broken body of a god — 
does that make us cannibal? Only if
we, too, are gods. Only if we, too, can
take a hundred hits & bounce back up. What
is the body but an icon, a show?
The wrestler slaps a man to kingdom come.
This is the miracle: he is beaten
to death, yet lives. Is killed, yet rises three
days later, thousands screaming his return.
We drink his blood, still warm. We wear his shirt.

(v)

We drink his blood, still warm. We wear his shirt,
the one he tugs off tenderly, a man
born to show the world his scars, their shining.
This is awe-some, the crowd chants, but if you
track any madness back, it grows holy.
My sister shuts her mouth & locks it tight,
but Catherine starved herself as well, food just
a distraction from the impossible
theology of bones growing below
her skin. The wrestler’s ribs glimmer between
his muscles. Stretched like putty, he puts us
together. The ring collapses, slanting,
pouring men on the concrete floor. This world:
it’s full of unnatural disaster.

(vi)

It’s full of unnatural disaster,
the wrestling ring: tables smash to pieces,
chairs twist until their metal seems transformed.
Their old purpose, transubstantiated.
This is dinner gone wrong, the self the meal.
Track any madness back: it grows holy:
even Jacob laced up boots to wrestle
an enemy, angel or God. He fought
to a draw & was blessed. His hip wrenched from
its socket & yet. What is a limp next
to fame like this? Forget Jacob, a name
adjacent to the Hebrew word for heel.
He is given a stage name: Israel.
He is given a role to play, a face.

(vii)

He is given a role to play, a face,
the wrestler who holds fire in his hands
& is not singed. He wears the barbed wire
like a halo. What does a man become,
when he can suffer so much, & thrive? He
is either a god or has his backing — 
track any madness back, it grows holy.
He is the patron saint of pain, of roar,
of strength made weak & raised to rage again,
of muscles buffed to shine until you see
yourself in them. You see yourself in him.
What is the body, after all, but a
mirror, but a glass? Filled to the rim &
brimming over. Spilling onto the mat.

(viii)

Brimming over, spilling onto the mat,
this tide is dark as garnets, deep & wide
as Jordan — says my sister — once upon
a time. I am the only mark for this
display of skin & bones, of blood that could
easily be my own. The body is
nothing but a punishment, a penance.
Track any madness back: it grows holy.
My sister presses her hands to her throat
& passes out, but Saint Teresa swooned
every day. She prayed to be made ill, as
if by suffering, she might serve. Who can
say? Everyone loves a comeback, the stone
rolled away. The body felled, arisen.

(ix)

Rolled away, the body felled, arisen,
seems to shine. The wrestler howls. My sister
peels the scabbed flats of her wrists & hands. She
flicks her skin away as if it is not
sacred, each cell a relic to be kept.
She doesn’t care what’s left behind. What is
the body but an urge to be beaten
out? A myth, that wounds give off their own light.
Track any madness back: it grows holy.
Fresh welts rise on the wrestler’s back like bread,
leaven, & blood teases below his skin,
a river of symbol, of sustenance
to be uncorked, drunk down. The crowd calls Oh
my God — but He does not acknowledge them.

(x)

My god — but he does not acknowledge them,
busied with wrecking worlds, a carpenter
in reverse. Christ himself flipped the tables
at the temple — talk about a heel turn.
This worship of bodies is nothing new,
this roar for the same bodies to be wrecked.
Between reverence & revulsion lies
a line as fine as cilia, fine as
flagella, fine as dust of bones ground down.
Track any madness back — it grows holy — 
but we balk at the brain kept in the jar.
Good God Almighty, the old announcer
cries, & we stand to see who has returned,
is risen to forgive our every sin.

(xi)

He rises to forgive our every sin,
rises to the first rope & the second
& the top. Climbs ladders & the chain-linked
sides of cages, seeks greater heights like heat.
What is the body — I have not forgot — 
but a story? Saints called shed former selves
like flesh. They fit in the skin they’re given,
the skin we stitch together as we watch.
We want — & then we call his famous name,
but he, shape shifter, has abandoned it.
Track any madness back: it grows holy.
Joseph of Cupertino also flew,
rose to the stone roof of his cell & left
his weighted & unsainted past below.

(xii)

His weighted & unsainted past below,
the wrestler clambers to the cage’s top.
Ho-ly shit, the crowd chants, but what isn’t
holy in this light? From parts unknown the
wrestler comes, from parts unknown he is pieced
together: a face, a heel, an eyeball
gouged out & dangling. The wrestler loses
a tooth in his matted beard. His forehead
is a desert, paths tracked into its sand.
He leans & teeters: Ho-ly shit, we breathe,
we scream, Ho-ly shit, as the wrestler falls.
Track any madness back: it grows holy,
heaven, plummeting. What is the body
if not a song? Holy, holy, holy.

(xiii)

If not a song — holy, holy, holy — 
what is this repetition but a cure?
(This compulsion is madness too, you know.)
The wrestler scatters tacks across the mat,
but Saint Sebastian lived through a thousand

arrows. In the ring, all destruction is
self-destruction. Thou shall not harm any
other — unless it is asked for, begged for,
only way to grant his wish. The wrestler
dies, by the way. This story doesn’t end
well. One plunge too many, one push too far:
the way any saint becomes a martyr.
Track any madness back: it grows, holy.
What else is this body, if not a prayer?

(xiv)

What else is this body, if not a prayer?
I’m running out of possibilities.
If the wrestlers are angels, saints, or gods,
then what does that make us, who cheer to see
them tormented? What are we, followers
or Pharisees? Believers or jeering
masses? Are we ourselves the gods they want
the blessing of? I can’t keep track. I don’t
know where my sister went. I don’t know who
she is. My focus slips like sweating skin
through palms, like blood through busted-open veins,
but I recall these words, a small comfort — 
I must have heard them somewhere, long ago — 
track any madness back, it grows holy.

(xv)

Track any madness back: it grows holy,
precious, in the reliquary. We kneel.
Blood pours from every homemade crown of thorns.
Oiled — as if we have just been baptized — 
we drink his blood, still warm. We wear his shirt.
It’s full of unnatural disaster,
the role he is given to play, the face:
brimming over, spilling onto the mat,
rolled away. The body felled, arisen — 
my god — but he does not acknowledge us.
He rises to forgive our every sin,
his weighted & unsainted past below.
If not a song — holy, holy, holy — 
what else is this body, if not a prayer?

Mairead Small Staid’s poems, essays, and articles have been published in AGNI, the Believer, Narrative, Ninth Letter, and Ploughshares, as well as online at The Hairpin, Jezebel, and The Point. She is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and a MacDowell Fellow.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].