By Gianmarc Manzione

I am the guy at work who packs octopus salad into his lunch bag as matter-of-factly as others pack Pizza Pockets, the guy who is as likely to heat leftover balsamic reduction in the lunchroom microwave as others are to heat a box of Lean Cuisine. Often, I wait until the lunchroom is empty before revealing my food, but occasionally a passing colleague will gawk at my repast with an expression of bemusement tinged with actual horror. Even so, it did not really occur to me that my culinary taste made me strange until the day someone spotted a single, raw mountain yam on my desk. (What can I say? I like popping a yam in the microwave now and then.)

At the time, I was holding down a day job writing features for something called the United States Bowling Congress. (Yes, the sport of bowling gets to have its own congress.) I was a poet mingling with a two-story office-load of bowlers; poetry is a passion best kept secret among a crowd like that, if you know what’s good for you.

My epicurean taste, too, was something I did my best to conceal. After all, bowling alleys are places where wings and beer comprise the sixth basic food group. Colleagues who saw me approaching the lunchroom from that moment forward often nudged each other and gossiped about the strange thing someone found on Gianmarc’s desk, a long, white, tubular object from the mountains that looks vaguely like a potato he swears you can eat. I soon earned the workplace nickname “Sweet Potato.”

I discovered the mountain yam while watching an episode of “Chopped” on The Food Network, the channel we have to thank for transforming the culinary arts into a steel cage match. I was disappointed to learn that mountain yams do not take well to microwaves. They develop a disagreeable consistency resembling some foul gruel of baby food and pillow stuffing. I later learned they are best eaten raw, shaved thinly for salads and such.

A mountain yam may not be something people turn to for advice, but it did teach me this: You can only hide who you are until somebody sees what you’re eating.

Gianmarc Manzione received his MFA in creative writing at The New School in 2004. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. This Brevity, his debut collection of poetry, was published in paperback in 2006. Pin Action: Small-time Gangsters, High-stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler who Became a Bowling Champion, is forthcoming from Pegasus Books in 2014. 

Each month TIE highlights a contemporary poet who presents three poems and one personal essay in which food is consumed, passed over, or reckoned with.  Gianmarc is our poet for December, 2013.