 thumbs – foto by smith i lost the full use of my right thumb. it swings and swivels but won’t bend. i’ve gone from opposable to semi-opposable. i’m moving down the evolutionary ladder. but that’s cool – i hear there’s a lot of room at the bottom. i was cleaning sage last month for MadManMax’s handmade sausage. 10 pounds of ground pork&fat sausage-to-be means a lot of sage. the endless circular cleaning picking pull and tug twixt thumb and forefinger aggravated my arthritis. i’d been out of anti-inflammatory pills for three days and was hurting, and this hurt way more. finished the task anyway, being macho mindless and male. haven’t been able to bend my thumb since. the tendon that pulls the thumb tip down won’t contract. can’t flick my bic. lady thinks i’ve lit so many lighters these past 40 years with that same thumb tendon i done wore it out. now that i’m short-thumbed, i can’t ride shotgun on the sage coach no more. it was good sausage though. they say when folk tour a chocolate, wine or ice cream factory, everybody wants a taste of the product afterwards, but after seeing how they make sausage, no one will touch the stuff. one of my worst food moments was eating blood sausage outside zagreb croatia. i ordered it because it’s so over the top – they cook the animal’s meat in its own blood, in my mind adding insult to injury. the poet in me made me try it. it tasted good, but the flesh was soft, pale, odd, felt regurgitated, pre-chewed. made me queasy. had to force myself to swallow. kept thinking i tasted blood. ate half, smeared the rest around. that night i lay in bed thinking i had to vomit it out of me, i did not want it in. messed with my mind. what started as poetic metaphor turned barbaric. lady had wild boar that night, and it was delicious.  all thumbs – foto by smith |