Excerpt

CHYNA

Beast, the boys say,
over the roar of Monday Night Raw,
but I think she is a bear,
black haired and brutal, comfortable
in her oiled flesh, which she wears like a custom suit.
Large, somehow lithe,
she sidesteps her opponents’ swings
in her black leather boots.
She fights men.
Beast, the boys say,
steroid freak,
as she lifts a man high,
wraps his thighs around her face,
smashes him spine-first into the mat.
He struggles to stand
while she waits to toss him across the ring
like the nothing he seems to her.
One of the boys makes a fist.
He pounds it into the cup of his other hand
like he's churning butter.
I wouldn’t fuck that with your dick, he says,
to another boy, who laughs,
puts his hand on my thigh.
I love the way she moves,
how she fills up her whole body.
Inside my small frame, I am even smaller,
and in this room, a kind of decoration,
a reassurance of what is right and natural.
Onscreen, Chyna bends a man in half
and the boys’ faces twitch
with everything they hate
and don’t understand.