Bread
by Misha Tentser
The Mother’s Cupboard waitress slings breakfast burgers to linemen
yawning before their shifts. I’m touch-starved, picking at my home
fries, sipping coffee after night shift at the bakery. I imagine grazing
a soft neck or curled eyelash. My palms are singed from flipping
sheets of bread with shitty mitts. They sizzle when I reach into the
oven’s maw. Yesterday, I dreamt bread loaf houses crushed by fallen
trees. Focaccia bridges crumbling under the weight of Sysco trucks.
When I woke, I sipped coffee on my sagging porch. On the street, a
school bus squealed to a halt. A boy hopped out and hugged his dad.
They walked into their ordinary house.
Misha Tentser is a poet from Tucson, Arizona. He teaches writing and works other odd jobs in Syracuse, New York.