The Sacred Athletic: A Look At “Sue Bird’s Second to Last Game at Climate Pledge Arena”
There are a few things I must confess before I respond to this poem. One, I’m a man. An ordinary, middle-aged man. Two, I’m not what anyone would consider a sports fan unless you count my unabashed enthusiasm for all things Olympics. But I love poetry, especially when it surprises and moves…or perhaps I should say pivots? “Sue Bird’s Second to Last Home Game at Climate Pledge Arena” by Jessica Gigot is a playful and poignant poem that dribbles past any perceived differences (I swear I’ll limit the puns) and connects us to our idols and each other, whether we’re gym rats or poetry pack rats. (And if you happen to be both, huzzah!)
Gigot’s fantastically titled poem is an imaginative leap into territory both deeply familiar to me (the domestic) and unfamiliar (basketball). The athletes referenced are household names, but I couldn’t tell you much about them. I can tell you more about “deciding between whole milk or 2%, organic or grass-fed” than I could about Michael Jordan or Bird (Sue, not Larry). It doesn’t matter if I’m a fan or not; the poem isn’t solely about the game. What matters is the speaker is a fan. There is an insight we gain, a joy by proxy, when we listen to those who are passionate about their subject. To witness a thing so that the readers themselves could love it? That, I believe, is one of the core missions of a poet, and it is beautifully accomplished here.
Gigot’s skill as a writer connects the reader in me to the craft, but it’s the clear admiration (“The female body in motion is a beautiful thing. Tough and also tender. Fierce and flowing,”) that pulls the rest of me into this fandom. With Gigot as a sports surrogate, the sacred athletic becomes apparent.
I also get the nervousness and tension of the speaker, which is palpable even in these fictional scenarios. I swear I felt my palms go clammy while reading this. The speaker imagines anxiously peeling tape from a package at the post office, going back and forth between milk options at a store. Wherever Sue Bird is, the speaker is as well, flustered in a wonderfully endearing and human way. When the speaker answers (“I’d say no, and then yes”) an imaginary question (are you an athlete?) as posed by an imaginary Sue Bird, I laughed. That’s a genuine and genuinely funny moment. That’s a real toad in an imaginary garden. The celebrity encounter, the repetition of the full name—Sue Bird every time—giving her an almost mythical status, juxtaposed with the most mundane tasks is effective and delightful.
“Show me, Sue Bird, how to live in this body. Tell me, Sue Bird, how do I trust my own strength,” the poet states. These questions are as suited to the athletic as the domestic. These are questions I ask myself when I help my father in and out of his wheelchair, or when I feel my own aching right knee climbing the stairs. It’s a poem about idols, sure, but it’s also about our youthful dreams and aging realities.
That being said, I’d be doing Gigot (and Sue Bird) a disservice if I focused exclusively on universals and ignored the specifics of audience and gender. How different might this poem read to an athlete, a woman, a young girl rather than a man who isn’t even a basketball fan, for instance? How different the impact of this poem if it were about LeBron and not Bird? Very different, I believe. There’s a power in the specifics, even if I can’t fully speak to them, but with talented writers like Gigot, even someone like me can begin to get it.
Gigot may not be a WNBA star, but she is a remarkably strong poet who absolutely deserves to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” in her “middle-aged mom athleisure” with any writer out there.
