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Book cover for What Things Cost: an anthology for the people What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
Rebecca Gayle Howell (ed.) et al.
https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813182438.001.0001
Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
07 March 2023
Online ISBN:
9780813197418
Print ISBN:
9780813182438

Contents

Book cover for What Things Cost: an anthology for the people What Things Cost: an anthology for the people
Chapter

Pride Fight

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Patrick Rosal
Patrick Rosal
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https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813182438.003.0085
Pages
202–203
  • Published:
    March 2023

Extract

The 600-lb. man and the 150-lb. man square off.
And people have paid to see these two
nudge each other, blow by bloody blow
(or by submission), as close as possible to death’s
front porch, without sending the other man
through that last gray door.
We’re yelling Fuck him up! Oh Shit! Get out
the way! Smash him! Though I don’t know
who I’m rooting for. I’m an American.
I could want the pale runt
to wreck the dark hulk to his knees
or cheer the giant as the pipsqueak
darts around the ring to dodge his lumbering foe.
The big man is casual,
swipes a paw at the air and misses
when the little man scuttles by,
and this goes on for some time,
the crowd jeering no one in particular.
We know, deep in our bodies, just about anything
is grotesque if you make it large enough. Science says,
in nature, all forms fail when you multiply them by scale.
And in this near-death match, I wonder
if what we’re yelling at isn’t a behemoth’s
bullrush toward this sack of taut
scrawn, the farthest margins
of all the gruesome multitudes each of us contains—
on one end, all that is puny, a fragile
and fleeting thrash of flesh,
on the other, everything humongous and terrible
(as if we could measure every catastrophe and rapture
according to this exponential order).
Dear reader, perhaps, if you’re like me,
you’re asking, Yes, yes,
but who wins? and I’ll tell you: it is the big man
who catches the little man charging in.
The big man falls, full weight,
and smothers his rival, whose face is smooshed
against a massive calf. Though the little man flaps
and squirms, turns red, he manages
from the bottom, with both his legs,
to take hold of the big man’s leg. The smaller man,
struggling, tucks the one enormous foot in his armpit,
and, with the might of every buck and a half of muscle
in his body, arches his back and, vise-like, squeezes.
If we thought the big man had but one
stoic face for the world,
he shows us at least one other,
and it is pain.
The big man, sweaty and exhausted,
his ankle about to snap,
taps out.
No one in or out of the ring
exults. We are the ones
who can’t move.
We fall into a moment of precise silence,
as if we can’t believe our eyes,
as if we’ve just witnessed two men become
exactly the size of ourselves.

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