Bread ~ Sharon Chmielarz

 

And if the bread wanted to be a house,

because some loaves do bear a resemblance,

 

how could you dissuade it from that desire

to shelter a body rather than build one?

 

Granted, an equal pleasure but a different matter

from a light in the window. That welcome.

 

It might be difficult. I foresee a crowd

gathering in the street. They’re hungry and cold.

 

Bread as house confuses them.

Look what happened when a woman

 

built hers of flour and sugar,

what she turned into

 

luring the hungry, we’re always hungry,

into her snares. Not unlike war, the crumbs

 

of former lives, buildings and stomachs

ruined. All for the impossibly full

 

moment: making of stone, leaven,

making a house rise on the corner.