I Guarantee It Poem by gershon hepner

A woman has orgasms just with her ears,
according to Fabrice Luchini;
for Wanda of fish fame a climax appears
when hearing Italian, “Linguine! ”

The Wearhouse man saying that he guarantees it
gives orgasms to my dear wife;
these words reach her (g) listening clitoris, tease it,
and bring the lounge lizard to life.

Whether in English, Italian or French,
the phrase that will make sure it’s risen is
“I guarantee it, ” since that’s what a wench
expects in the lovemaking business.

Even in Russian these words’ hidden power
say uncle, as in Uncle Vanya,
providing a climax in girls I devour
that lingers like linguined lasagna.

Though guarantees like the linguine I eat
sometimes don’t provide what they offer,
the words that will always bring my wife to heat
are the guarantee that I still love her.

Elaine Sciolino writes about Fabrice Luchini (“Make ’em Laugh, and Love Classics, ” NYT, January 3,2009) :
Even as a diner at the Brasserie Wepler on the Place de Clichy, Fabrice Luchini feels compelled to perform. One of the best-known character actors in French cinema, he confesses that he is more attached to the theater, and more precisely his one-man show, which is now touring France and may come to New York in the fall. So perhaps it is to be expected that halfway through a plate of assorted cakes and ice creams, he shakes his shoulders and suddenly belts out the opening bars of the American rhythm-and-blues classic “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” Mr. Luchini,57, sings in English, even though he professes to speak not a word of the language and vows never to learn. “For me, French is so rich and so sacred that learning it is like learning a foreign language, ” he said. “It’s a victory. After learning French it would be bizarre to learn another language.”…One of his sketches pays homage to Marguerite Duras. “Women have orgasms first of all with their ears! ” he quotes her as saying, making the audience members repeat the line back to him until they get it right. He also tells the story of his first encounter with Mr. Rohmer and how the two of them were instantly drawn to each other when they realized they were both reading Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” He both celebrates and mocks the density of Roland Barthes’s writing. For ordinary people, he says, a couple’s disappointing first encounter may be nothing more than a “normal” event; for Barthes it becomes “a brief production in the field of love of a counterimage of the loved object.”

1/4/09