13. The Dough Also Rises on Black Lives Matter Plaza

 

when the scent of dough | changes

into the scent of bread baking | life is in it

dough grown into full fettle | ready

for transformation | the yeast’s growing

makes the dough | dies into the form of bread

the scent | the heft | the crust | tell us

this is a real thing | held in our bare hands

ready to continue the life | of our body

until we give even that back to the earth

recirculation | we are built for recycling

the world turns | processes accumulate

upon processes | the death of one man

multiplies into many deaths | which create

many more | we were born to die

so we do | not necessarily on schedule

we practice transformation every day

turn into what we had imagined | turned  

into what we had feared | we would be

the clocks tick doesn’t move time | but

we move with the click | for the rhythm

 

yeast has no purpose | so we treat it well

enough food to eat | enough warmth | even

the flour to give them a | shape to fit into

time | always time | the waiting between

the kneading | yeast resembles a virus

it doesn’t care what it does | it might work

as expected or not | it may raise the dough

up into a fat flaccid ball | or sit comatose

unable to function | useless | pointless

unable to rise up | to change anything

we fight the virus by | closing down

staying in | waiting it out | wearing our

selves down | we fight the world by

rising up | leaving our shelters | inserting

ourselves back into the world | in a mass

people too close to be safe because

no-one can be safe | because safety is in

danger | and numbers | and luck

some searching for justice will die | or

allow others the chance to die

 

bread is forged in fire | when dough becomes

crust and sword | the sturdy rap | the hollow sound

the scent of dough baking | into its baked and leavened

self | a warm thing | removed from the womb

already its full self | break the bread | with two hands

spread butter across the white inside of it | the soft guts

of the bread | oozing head and filling with salt and butter

the human urge to smell it | to hold its warmth in two hands

to watch the butter sink in | to smell and to taste

the wholeness is | to make what we eat

to each what we sow | we’ll leave that to metaphor

a world where the unjust rue unjustness | where life is

just a metaphor for death | where the police lie because

we have been taught to believe them | we created myths

to allow us to kill slaves | for the fear we created out

of them | we killed the black sharecroppers | because

we were afraid they would rise up against us | we killed

the little boys | because we believed they were too large

we let the police kill our black brothers | so we will have

nothing to fear | nothing to fear except ourselves