Sometimes
the dough is perfect.

Other times
it is baked broken

without anyone
being able to tell.

And at times it is obvious 
before the oven reaches full heat

that nothing can save 
this one.  

In the first instance,
the bread is perfection.

In the third 
the bread is aborted before baking. 

As for the second?
Think about all of 

the people you’ve met
and you will understand

why sometimes
after a conversation

you find a taste 
of their mold in your mouth.

What do you
bring to the table?  

At a solstice party
we were all asked
if we wanted
to purge ourselves
of last year, manifest
intentions for this year,
or both; invited us
to write these
on slips of paper, fold them,
and cast them into
the fire pit’s flames.

At a solstice party
I thought long and hard
and I wrote something on
a slip of paper, folded it,
thought long and hard after I did;
then I did as I was told
and cast it into the flames.

I will not tell you
which I wrote.
I barely told myself
and I really can’t remember
and it isn’t that important,
at any rate.  

What is important — 
something about such rituals;

something about
erasure and creation
hand in hand
jumping over coals, about
prayers tunneling into smoke
and coming out into clean air.

At a solstice party — 
freezing, burning,
then freezing again;
how we move in the world,
how it moves in us.

Woke up — perhaps I dreamed this?
I found myself outside at daybreak
in a village I did not know.

I asked a woman I met
carrying her daily water back
from a fountain,

tell me: who is shooting at us
from the hills above this village?
I know I heard the guns.

Before the shooting gets much closer;
before you have to drop your water;
before they spill your blood

let me take you by the hand.
You could flee this angry land
and go to where there are no guns.

Do you know this place, she asked?
Can you name it, offer a map?
I will go there myself when I am able.

Just tell me
where it is — 
and then I woke up

having said nothing
of such a place
to her.

Perhaps I dreamed the name too?
Perhaps I never knew. Perhaps
there is no place like that. 

It seems that I’ve had
this dream before,
and more than once.

It may be
that I have forever offered
such false hope.

You are late. You are not.
Call this hour what you want.
Either way, you must be on time.

This is how it has always felt
when you know you have come home.
It’s been too long, or not nearly long enough.

It was just long enough for you
to miss the taste of this tap water.
To have forgotten how old the pipes are

in this city, in this place.
You were thirsty enough to hope
rust and scale could quench your thirst.

One gulp from the same old tumbler
you’ve always used, taken down
from the faded cabinet where it rests

between visits, is enough
for you, this time. Rinse 
the glass, turn your back,

turn the knob, and go back
to the road. To wherever
is next.

Perhaps this is the last time
you will ever come home. Perhaps not.
You don’t get to know

now. You can only know that
by going. By going out
to other places. By going

anywhere else.
You do understand
the thirst you feel at once

upon leaving but
you do have to go to feel it
and you know

you are one of those
who were born
to feel it, so off you must go.

Imagine yourself
among white sparks
coming off a grinding wheel.

You fly off, then vanish.
Just a byproduct
of loss in the name

of honing an edge.
What do you think
will be left behind?

It can cut. It can
let blood. I suppose 
it has its own gleam of 

beauty and a sheen
of crafter’s skill. You 
will be gone by the time

it is finished
and you feel
you deserve 

neither honor nor blame
for what comes next — so,
based on how quickly

you escape consequences,
you are probably
American through and through.