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.

Suppose you go
tell that man in the red Toyota
who is driving
around the neighborhood
jumping out
and handing a quarter
to each person he sees
telling them with huge grins
that it is for good luck and good news
in the coming new year

Suppose you decide
that it falls to you
to decide
that he’s nuts

You pull your kids aside
and pull out the trusty cellphone
to call the police

I bet that 
even if you do all that

you keep the quarter

By your roadside,
your very own, the one
outside your house.

You are waiting
to be let
back inside. 

Here they come,
leaving your doors open
as if no one lives there.

Someone’s
bagged and tagged
on a gurney. Not you,

though. They know
it isn’t you. They 
are giving you time,

all the time you need,
before they open their mouths
and remove all doubt.

By the roadside, formerly
your own roadside, the one
outside the house

you’ll be selling soon,
the roadside you will soon
drive one more time.

Right now you’re cold.
You wish for a jacket
and like a machine

you will go back inside 
and get yours from the closet
that soon won’t be your own.

Your own house
fading from view
until you cannot see it

as you drive away
in the fresh
dark cold.

To lie in bed
and love the breath
sighing next to you.
To get up out of that
and notice the time
after having slept all night.
A smile in the pre-alarmed
dark of the bedroom,
one last one before
daybreak and its
struggles. To have
barely five minutes
before the misfortune of 
sunrise: it’s not the
way it is supposed to be
according to everything
and everyone else, but
here I am, wishing once again
for reversal.  

First thing I do
after getting up
is pet and feed
the cat. After that

I begin the lamentations:
the world, the job, 
the pain of rising age within.
I feel indignities and
humiliations and above all
of them, like a creaking ceiling,
the whisper of one future day
calling out, “coming, coming
soon; you’ve seen nothing yet;”

but I did see the face
on Miesha when I gave her
her bowl, and at least
I started well and someone
loves me in her way,
and I can call upon
that small thing
whenever I am in need.

Give me a smart time
and I’ll be all over it
like a dog on dropped steak.

I like a word that pushes back,
a phrase to turn my path
toward light.

But — one that takes me
for dumb or leaves me dumber
than I was before I read it?

Leaves me starving for honesty,
or which clearly jerks my knee
and refuses to understand why

I might take exception? I’m
not perfect. I’m often wrong,
but if you do not care to see 

how we got there,
you choose to give me
bones upon which

to break a tooth, and
understand — I do bite.
I do bite back, gnaw,

suffer myself to choose
suffering to chase off 
such chosen violence.

I will break a tooth
off in you. I will break
into pain for you. 

I’ll bleed through my ivory.
I’m not proud of the bleeding
we both will do as much as

I’m proud not to be
unwilling to leave anything
undropped under the table.

Before setting out for the day,
bathe your gut with a shot glass

full of olive oil. There is no evidence
that this makes any sense

medically, but I trust in
Mediterranean wisdom;

they live a long time there.
Every relative I knew from there

lived a long time.They loved
the sun and their gardens. 

Loved the heft of a tomato
in the hand as it came off the vine.

On a cool night, kiss your fingertips
toward heaven and say “thank you”

in whichever language you choose.
It will be understood and you will

live a long life. Every cherished person
in my life offered some gratitude

now and then for their time here.
For the taste of tomatoes in olive oil.

For a convenient, chipped glass
cleaned with care before they retired

for the night, readied for the morning.
For a belief that was not abstract. 

For sunlight in a garden warming them
as they sat at their worn table, waiting in joy

for whatever else
was to come.