Changing Perspective
(because men really are different)


Making stuffed peppers
on a Sunday afternoon,
stereo on low for background
noise, some sort of acoustic guitar thing.
Drifting, drifting....
I learned a long time ago
that you can mix the hamburg,
rice,
and onions
much faster,
more evenly
if you do it by hand.
Shove them
deep in the BIG bowl
and kneeeeeead.
I used to find this method
repulsive

like hearing about, talking about
what to expect from your first menses
before it happens to you.
The anticipatory period
(you should pardon the pun)
of pain and gore-flecked fantasy.
Repulsive

like thinking about, talking about
hearing about the dreaded future
blow job
with your equally green friends.
"I won't;
well,
maybe, but only if
I really,
really,
really
love him."
And it is all about the blow job
with Them, don't you think?
Expected.
Proof
of undying devotion
and the wanton expertise
you've yet to acquire.
I tell my girlfriends
(after a couple of tokes)
that someday,
one
day
I'll write a poem about the blow job
and call it just that:
It's All About the Blow Job!
Repulsive;

I used to find this method
utterly repulsive —
greasy, bloody meat
collecting under my fingernails,
grains of sticky rice
caught in knuckle creases.
Yep, changing perspective.

Today I'm kneading,
pushing, squeezing this muck…
the hamburg,
rice,
and onions
unrepulsed, no longer of any importance.
Not an ick, or even
an ewww,
it has become — after all these years —
just rice.


© P. Gomes 2003