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