Lifts by Jemma Walsh

My favourite wrestler was ‘Hacksaw’ Jim Duggan.

Hulk Hogan rattled me with that bronze snarl and tearing 

off of his yellow shirt, but Jim had a lumberjack gatch, crazed 

eyes and a 2x4 plank which was honest somehow, old school.

These days I’m still finding it hard to believe that 

as a strapping younker, André ‘the Giant’ was driven 

to his lycée by Samuel Beckett. A neighbourly lift, no less.

And I have tried, more than once, to picture the scene— 

that spectacle of giants just trucking along la route

in some 50s beige jalopy, no radio, only the engine’s low rumble.

The future ‘tombstone piledriver’ crouched, riding shotgun, 

the playwright silent, mulling on his passenger’s god-like height.

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Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, berlin lit, And Other Poems, Banshee, The Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Madrid Review, The Alchemy Spoon and elsewhere. @jemmawalsh