Be More Like Sputnik Monroe

It's hard to be humble when you're 235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with a body women love and men fear. —Sputnik Monroe

When my father died, he left me a trove

of video tapes, a warped memorial

for those men he watched with my mother

before she left for parts unknown,

for those fights he relived once he was laid

off from the plane yards. We watched

men like Sputnik Monroe bleed the hard way,

shook our fists as he broke rules

against guys who were easier to cheer.

He was a bad Elvis, greased-back

hair with a shock of white, Sputnik Monroe

mixed it up everywhere, a rodeo

fistfight, a henhouse tornado. My mother

picked a fight in an Idaho truck stop

once, stabbed a man’s chest with her middle

finger, then stepped to one side

so my father could fight him in the parking lot.

Afterwards, my mother was silent

all the way back to Seattle, her disgust

with him—the way he wrapped his arm

around her shoulder, guided her to the car,

and sped back to the freeway—hanging

between them from that point forward.

Sputnik Monroe clobbered men

wherever he went, sneered at those fists

raised against him in Memphis.

Some nights, as my wife sleeps upstairs,

I watch my father’s video tapes and

imagine what I would have done that day

if I knew that my marriage depended

on what I did with my hands.