Fig. 875:  6×4” menu printed on cream silk, fraying at the edges. Embroidered in black thread, entitled “Midnight Breakfast.” Service includes a single grape from the giant’s vineyard, a fried goose egg white with solid gold yolk over a toasted breadcrumb path. Demitasse cup filled with broth made from a fish with a coin in it mouth. Fresh juice squeezed from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Fig. 899: Gradations of Loaves:
      Grade A – Fresh and light, made by someone who kneads their love into the
              dough, sliced with a knife whose sole purpose is slicing this kind of food
               offering.
      Grade B – Country, food of necessity, cheaply made, quickly consumed.
      Grade C – Nearly gone, rough crust preserved. A hunk hand torn, from ragged
              hunger, maybe on the run.
      Grade D – Saved to crumble, a last resort path back, better for birds.

Sarah Ann Winn

 

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 Sarah Ann Winn’s poems and hybrid texts have appeared in Cider Press Review, Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, Passages North and Quarterly West, among others. Look for her micro chapbook, Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, from Porkbelly in May, 2016. Her first chapbook, Portage, is available as a free c-chap from Sundress Publications. She holds an M.F.A. from George Mason University, as well as a Masters in Library Science from Catholic University of America. She’s currently a free-range librarian in Manassas, Virginia, where she lives with her husband, two sweet beagle/lab mix dogs, and one bad cat. Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling on Twitter..

Artwork: Georg Flegel, “Still Life with Stag Beetle,” 1635, public domain

20 Dec This entry was published on December 20, 2015 at 12:05 am and is filed under 16 (December 2015), Archive, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.