“Cuidado - be careful
how you pronounce 'hambre'"
my Spanish conversation teacher
alerted me.

I’d proudly just given
my oral response
for my turn at the class exercise,
believing I’d said I’d been very hungry,
when she gave me the tip,
her tone of importance
and precision even more
emphatic than usual
though tempered
with a smile and wink.

She then recounted
an anecdote
of a female friend of hers,
who’d also had the habit
of mispronouncing
the term in Spanish,
and so was sometimes misunderstood to say
she’d had many men, "hombre"
instead of much hunger.

Playing the audio
of "hambre" on my computer
that night, over and over,
to hear the distinction,
I wondered how the Spanish might sound
if a woman wanted to say
she hungered for a man.

03/02/2007