Journal

Nougat: A Love Story

A comedy poem from slimbook 'Foothills'

The caramel nougat in the candy box
Didn't know what to do.
There she was, five squares away,
A truffle so voluptuous and true.
Such full-bodied cocoa! Such intricate swirls!
Delicately freckled with mandarin peel!
How to behold her and then do a thing
But feel for her, feel for her, feel?

Nougat sighed, “I have no raspberry cream, nor
Tender praline – how can I hope to enchant her?"
"Oh give it a rest,” snapped a raisin rum fudge,
Whose liquor streak made her kind of a downer.
“Didn't you hear about the apricot crunch
Who pined for a dewberry fondant?
Apricot sat melting while dewberry remained
As oblivious as he was despondent."

"But," said Nougat, "Did apricot speak?
Of her loveliness, of his unquenchable flame?"
Fudge huffed, “An apricot crunch, so common
A thing, address her with her French-sounding name?
Of course not, you lump! You're a last-resort pick,
A cheap sugar hit - sad story, whatever, boo hoo.
If it comes handcrafted and is hard to pronounce,
That’s booty that just ain’t for you."

Nougat was silent, gave a tolerant smile,
As from raisin rum's crew there came laughter.
Such dreams in this chew, it was clear to
The rest, could only end in disaster.
Inside Nougat, though, a determination formed,
As hard as a Brazil nut itself:
To be stronger, wiser, whatever it took;
To be measured by more than one's wealth.

So, as the candy was opened for Christmas,
And others around them were eaten,
Nougat read up on high-confectionery ways
And endeavored by all means to sweeten.
Until he and Truffle were the only ones left
(Plus a marzipan spit out, despised);
Terrified that she'd be the one taken next,
Nougat worked hard for her eyes.

Truffle, humming Bizet, glanced over at last:
“What's up, Noogs, you seem antsy today.”
“No longer,” Nougat cried, “Am I the candy of choice
For the gas-station purchase on Mother's Day!
Now ballads I can sing, and in soaring verse string
Sentiments as sweet-crafted as you!
With these changes in me — you’re seeing them, right? —
To your beauty I am paying my dues.”

Truffle blinked and seemed quite enthralled,
So on Nougat went, like a butterfly set free.
“Yes, adieu to the nothing clump I once was,
Risen from gunk to smooth gallantry!
From muzak to Mozart, peep show to Picasso -
And I'll have you know I can spell ‘epitome'.
(I learned that word for all that you are,
For the stairway to glory you have shown me.)"

Truffle frowned. “But your peanut lumps,
Your sticky bits. And, darling, your rickety sprinkles.
And let's not forget those dents in your coat
That looked to me a little like dimples."
"Enough!" Nougat pleaded. “No more of that!
For your pleasure I am now reborn. I will melt,
I will toil, I’ll steal Godiva gold foil —
And die content in the full love I've felt."

Truffle smiled a bit. "You silly prick.
I liked you much better before."

- ZMB

 
Notes from Zoe Marie Bel

When I was nine years old, I wrote a short story about a magic ruler. When wielded by its owner (who happened to be a nine-year-old dork with a jagged fringe in a sandstone English village), the ruler became a kind of pauper's lightsaber. Rather than take down intergalactic bad guys, it delivered ruin on various local dipshits I knew, doing so through humiliation rather than through violence. (The ruler would make a boomerang tour of the room/playground, severing belts and backpack straps, so that dipshit pants and belongings fell prey to gravity.)

One other thing. It was written entirely from the perspective of the ruler.

It was around this time that my teachers said, "Is there a glue factory near you, Zoe? Heavy fumes?" And also, "You should take your writing seriously, Zoe." Writing seriously, I gathered, meant writing about humans, not inanimate objects. Writing, after all, centered on soul. And rulers – not even the ones with centimeters along one edge and inches along the other – were decidedly lacking in the soul department.

I largely followed that advice in the writing I've done ever since. (I wrote my first juvenilia novel soon afterward, and it was about feuding mixed-race brothers on an inner-city housing estate. Now that, teach, is a GOLD-STAR pivot.) Every now and then, though, I guess I just can't stand humans anymore. That's when it's back to joyously writing from improbable perspectives, such as dour lesbian goldfish, and, yes, a smitten candy.

Look, I don't even like nougat. Nougat is basically tofu that went to the mall with its daddy's credit card. But everybody's got something. What I wanted to capture in this poem is that we are often the last person to recognize our own something. Mainly because we're too busy studying up on how to become somebody else.

This poem is extracted from Foothills, my slimbook of poetry that will publish on February 7th 2024. Nougat: A Love Story is one of the three tongue-in-cheek poems that make up 'Interlude', a central segment sandwiched between the book's two main parts. As such, it's a good representative of the book's playful side. In the spirit of one edge for centimeters, and the other for inches, I'll post another poem here soon, representative of the book's serious side.

To read more about Foothills, preview its contents, and buy it, visit its page at Scatterpunk Press.

Published: January 22nd, 2024. Extracted from Foothills (February 2024, Scatterpunk Press, ISBN 978-2-9591921-0-4). Copyright © Zoe Marie Bel, 2024. All rights reserved.