Saturday 18 October 2014

New Poem: Pizza

We ordered in a pizza and when it came

we talked about how we'd divvy it up.

He said that because I didn't eat as much

as him, I should have less. I said OK but

it wasn't much less than him and after all

it was me who had bought the pizza. He said

that was besides the point. This was about

eating not paying.

I said, 'Is it?'

So he said, 'How about thinking in eighths?'

I said, 'Go on, I can run with that.'

He said, 'How does five eighths and three

eighths sound to you?'

I said that I thought I was hungrier than three

eighths, and he said but 'hungrier' would be

four-eighths.

I said, 'What's wrong with that?'

And he said, 'Four eighths is the same as a half.'

I said, 'Is it?'

He said, 'Well let's talk sixteenths, how about

I have nine-sixteenths and you have seven?'

'Does that add up to the whole pizza?' I said.

'Yes, it does,' he said.

'Well then that sounds a bit more like the way

me and you eat pizza,' I said, ‘yes, you probably

eat one sixteenth more than I do.'

'Two,' he said.

'Two what?' I said.

'Two sixteenths,' he said, 'which is the same as

one eighth.’

‘Is it?' I said, 'why have you gone back to eighths?'

'Because that's how you do the divvying up,' he

said.

'Fair enough,' I said, 'so let's carve it up.'

I went over to the drawer and looked for the big

knife we use to cut up pizzas and it took me a

moment or two because it had got caught under one

of those strainer spoons you can buy in France.

When I came back, he was breaking chunks off the

pizza and eating them.

'Have you divvied it up into sixteenths?' I said.

'No,' he said, 'I was getting hungry so I've started

already.'

I looked at him.

'Great, you've got the pizza knife,' he said, 'do you

want to divvy it up into sixteenths, or shall I?'

I said, 'Hang on a mo. If you've started on it already,

doesn't that affect the way the divvying up works? I

mean…I mean…'

'No, he said, 'it's just the same.'