Eating With My Fingers
March 12 2013


Eating with my fingers
is like painting without a brush,
messy, and sensuous.
But warm skin
and grazing tongue,
instead of cool
and frictionless.

Not the whole hand
in its clumsy greed
combative grasp.
Just fingers and thumb,
the great homunculus of touch
that rules
my outer cortex,
conjuring the world
from its black hermetic cave.

Eating
must be impolite,
full
of urgent craving.
Warm grease, dripping.
The push and pull
of salt, and sweet.
A heady whiff
of bitter.
Meticulously licking
every last bit

And for dessert
my lips on your skin,
tasting
breathing you in.

How I have you pictured
with my eyes closed,
like a blind man
who paints with his hands
whose brain lights up.

Who has practiced well,
listening softly
honing touch.


When we become adults, we leave the childish things behind. Not for us the messy, immersive, sensuous stuff of finger-food and finger-paint. Because stern parents, in no uncertain terms, taught us that in polite company, one does not eat with one's hands.

This poem is about the richness we miss, distancing ourselves with hard cold implements. The experience of food is more complete when we go all in, using touch, smell, temperature and texture; by recruiting more than simple taste. While the blind man, who has attuned his neglected senses, can paint a more intimate portrait than a cursory look. And how can we learn to love, if we don't learn to let go, risk the mess?

And why, of all things, minimize touch? Because in the sensory cortex, the real estate devoted to the fingers is far greater than that required by mere anatomy:  the brain is disproportionately weighted in favour of touch.

The poem opens with a comparison between finger-food and finger-painting. Later, when it segues from food into sex -- from one of the great sensory experiences of life to another -- there is painting again, in the form of a blind man picturing his lover by touch:  made richer by feel; made more complete on the canvas of the mind than it is in real life.