Nectarines

Nectarines

The gay man standing next to me
At the organic food store
Is sqeezing 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.

Copyright by George Bilgere
Poems from The Good Kiss
Winner of the Akron Poetry Award
(through the Akron State University Press)
Posted over on the Bilgere Home Page