day ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY SEVEN

Bakery: Under New Management

The house is quiet.
The cool November morning
has fogged up the insides
of our badly-in-need-of-repair windows
--just another unheeded call to the landlord.
The wind rattles leaves just as easily
as the thin panes of ancient glass,
trembling in the wake of the future quake,
set back in peeling white, crumbling frames.

My wife is shaking. Scared but cried out.

I sit in stunned silence,
feeling every bit the unwound,
nickel-plated D string of an overworked guitar.

In our minds, we both turn over frustration

and disappointment in equal portions
on the spit sizzle, muddled cogitators
in our heads
trying to fathom how we,
these united states, let this come to be.

Collectively quiet. Together but alone

in this morning, a rarity really,
something meant to be enjoyed,
the two of us home & awake,
a pot of coffee steaming in the dark,
the hardwood cool under the pad of bare feet,
pajama bottomed & sweater topped,
waiting for the sun to illuminate,
to show us that this day will come
to pass like dust slowly settling after the blast

but this, too, has been taken.

Taken right alongside the hopes of a reprieve,
a slip, slide & fall from the sieve of misfortune,
& placing grace, now like bitter purple grapes, in the hands
of a people who can’t even look one another in the eye,
a people who don’t acknowledge the toil of sisters,
the art of brothers, the humanity of all.

Filtering through kernels for boll weevils,

but on finding the slithering snake,
orange, unfurling & hissing,
we decided to give him the keys to the bakery.
The flour could’ve made flaky rolls
of golden honey wheat, nurturing warmth
for all those left out in the cold,
a grain for every pang & growing pain
of our burgeoning, wet-eared democracy,

but we chose

to disenfranchise the weak,
piggyback another set of burdens
on the tired shoulders of those already carrying too much,
salt the batter so bitter with the vile bile of a bigly bigotry,
make the sweetest treats even further out of reach
for everyone but the elite,
and eat shit cakes.

--A.S. Coomer