BREAD

Charles Gregory

In the kitchen's fungus smell of yeast his Grandmother shaped the flesh of flour and water into loaf

Imagining the dead | on the face of the living, she speaks fondly without reverence, tells him he was born with his father's mouth that man was always catching flies she says, as the boy slips his tongue on his parted lips in recognition you have your mother’s eyes, she says. always sleeping, always half mast and his Grandmother clasps her hands clean, vanishes in a puff of white dust Only he remains . to watch the lump rising under the tea towel as slowly as the hour-hand on the kitchen clock

And that night the second rising comes in his dream, overflows the pan, grows to the size of a whale he does not fight being swallowed by