Bread

by Jack Frey

FRESH bread steaming, pulpy from the oven…

kneading dough becomes a chore

when the ingredients make a mighty fuss

clawing / scratching

moving about

giving naughty children food for thought,

but tends to keep the Johnnys and Harriets quiet—

WHAT teeth has the bread, what

fibrous meaty pulsing veins,

yet if it comes to life in the oven

why should that seem at all strange?

IS it a bread-animal

flesh and flour / bran and brawn?

IT shrieks with fright at the sight of the

knife, when it spies the serrated edge with

bulging crimson-rimmed eyes

begging, pleading, coughing, bleeding

sliced to slices

dismembered by the blade

by golly / sandwiches must be made—

LIFE from the oven, such a simple trick

random delicious quick.

© 2010 Jack Frey.  All rights reserved.  

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack Frey is a Canadian who lives in Beijing, China with his wife and two young boys. He writes/works/interacts at a ratio of 2.3:4.0:1.7. He wants a vegetable garden of his very own, because he's a dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of guy. Bits of his writing will appear in Shelf Life Magazine, Writers' Bloc (Rutgers), Apathy is Easy, and Terracotta Typewriter, among others.