The poet’s first steps out of anorexia, in her thirties.

Victoras Kulvinskas wrote of fruit, “It is the only food which offers itself to us freely.”

*****

Recorded Reading (3:27): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t0vnu70g58bekw18nvqz9/Strawberry-Tantrica.mp3?rlkey=bhyui4qzf8uispdb60bcnkxrc&dl=0

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Strawberry Tantrica

At those times in our lives
When things don’t look too good
We each react, on many days,
By temperament, to mood,
Reflected in the diff’rent ways
We will relate to food

Some of us, when the fires of life
Our snowy pinions singe
Will stresses multiple allow
Our need for nurture to unhinge
Then we respond excessively
By going on a binge

Others — and this category
Is that into which I fall —
Allow the circumstance in which
We find ourselves so to appall
We slough into discouragement
And just can’t seem to eat at all

It strikes us then we have small right
Put our unworthy lives before
The life another being of ~
Who knows of us which is worth more?
Such a presumption strikes us then
As something which we must abhor

One day, while standing at the sink
My little kitchen in
Preparing to, perhaps,
Prospective love affair begin,
I pondered how the understanding
Of that fair swain win

“How does one tell a person,”
To myself I thought,
“How might in the sensual realm
Please you as he ought,
Without hopelessly scrambling
Such a pleasant person’s thought?”

‘Twas then the Tantric strawberry
Spoke up from her bowl:
“You cannot what will pleasure me
At present hope to know
Unless you swift more cognizant
Intuitively grow…”

“Alright,” I said, (forgive the pun)
“You’ve led me on — I’ll bite —
What do I have to answer
To get this question right?
What is it that will indeed
Give you ultimate delight?”

She blushed, if it were possible,
Even redder than she had,
Replying, “It will make this berry
Very, very glad
The day some lusty little lass
Or ravenous lad

Ruthlessly me ravage
After out this bowl me take,
Allowing me his or her thirst
And hunger so to slake
Until there’s nothing left of me
But seed another me to make!”

I listened in amazement —
Her enthusiastic voice,
Which showed she meant just what she said,
Had given me no choice —
However, I may have let slip
A little unbelieving noise

“For this I was created,”
She hastened to reassure
“My unique contribution,
Pertinent and pure,
And my genuine ecstasy —
I couldn’t ask for more!”

I listened, and I learned that day
From that berry, wise and sweet,
Which my anorexia
Helped enable me to beat,
Knowing I may not sorrow give
But pleasure, to the fruit I eat

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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