Charles Harper Webb: How About Cramps and Bloating

—Woman on a TV commercial

Sometimes, as I raced the bases after dinner, Mom’s pot roast
and chocolate pie would join hands to wring my guts.
 
   Once a cramp seized me halfway across Green Lake,
   my anaconda-bowels straining to drag me down.

Charlie-horsed sixty feet deep, I pulled back on my Scuba fin
till the clutching in my fatted calf let go.

   As for bloating—I’ve seen dead dogs blown tick-tight.
   I’ve hauled red snapper up 200 feet through Gulf Stream blue,

their jewel-eyes popped, swollen swim-bladders poking
from their mouths in pink Fuck yous.

   I’ve had gas pains, but never said, as a guy who (once
   and only once) dated my wife-to-be, did after a meal—

not, “Let’s lounge like satraps, and lick honey
from one another’s skin,” but “Let’s go home and bloat.”

   I’ve never sipped tea while discussing menses on TV,
   but I’ve slurped coffee and wolfed a fresh-caught rainbow

by a freestone stream, so glad to be there, my throat cramped
and my heart rose, tight as a blimp, above the trees.