The Good Kiss by George Bilgere

Author:George Bilgere [Bilgere, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781884836930
Publisher: The University of Akron Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nectarines

The gay man standing next to me

At the organic food store

Is squeezing the nectarines

With the same concentration

I would give a woman’s breasts,

Or he would give,

Or might give—I don’t really know—

The weight between his lover’s legs.

He is trim, fortyish, wearing a pair

Of vaguely European loafers

And the kind of perfect haircut

No stylist has ever felt I deserved.

His slacks and T-shirt exist at a point

On the spectrum of casual elegance

Just beyond my ability to actually detect it

But which nonetheless makes me feel,

In my jeans and JC Penney’s sports shirt,

Like a shambling, half-trained circus bear.

When standing next to a woman

In a supermarket, I sometimes feel

As if we were back in the Garden,

A realm of fertile ferment

Where we walk in a kind of heady sexual buzz

Among the ripe fruits and frozen dinners of the world,

Temptation everywhere

As we scan the zebra codes

Of our deliciously

Unfamiliar flesh.

And when I pass a straight guy

In the aisles, we nod, or raise an eyebrow

To acknowledge our place

In the hairy fellowship of predators.

But when this man and I

Look briefly into the Sanskrit, the blank

Scrabble tiles of each other’s eyes,

We smile briefly and go back

To thinking, quite seriously,

Of nectarines.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.