Love and Zero, Dr. Martin and the Egg

by Suzanne Allen


Five onion paper pages of definitions
in the OED for love:
“6. noun: the animal instinct between the sexes,
and its gratification.” Still,
nowhere in those five, three-columned pages
does it say that love is equal to zero
in tennis.

A Hungarian French professor, Dr. Martin
who made me cry
when I couldn’t understand the subjunctive,
said that English tennis players,
upon hearing the French ones cry “l’œuf” for zero,
heard “love” and questioned not its use.
But l’œuf is French for egg,
and an egg
is precisely the shape of a zero.

…no wonder this once
misheard word
makes me hungry.


* * * * *

"Love and Zero, Dr. Martin and the Egg," was first published by Pearl Magazine, and it is included in Suzanne Allen's 2021 book, We Wash Our Hands as well as in her forthcoming book, Awkward.
 
Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. Her poems appear widely online and in print, and she has two chapbooks verisimilitude (corrupt press) and Little Threats (Picture Show Press.) She also blogs intermittently at suzanneallenpoet.wordpress. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her long-awaited collection of Paris poems Awkward, will be released this winter.