Bread

The sand is a kiln.
It chars my soles, bites up my shins.
The sea coughs salt into my lungs.
 
I run—
Bone and breath and skin,
Dragged forward
By the ghost of bread.
 
Flour on a broken stone.
The promise
Thrown like a bone to a dog.
We are being carved thinner,
To be made more obedient.
 
Their kindness
Rings like iron on the teeth.
 
I keep my mouth shut.
The wind tastes of wire.
The sun stares with a butcher’s eye.
 
“Man cannot live by…”
Who spat that out?
Some full-bellied prophet?
Here, bread is breath.
 
I’ll take the flour.
Knead it with knuckles full of fire.
I’ll press my rage into its belly,
Stretch it to the edges—
An enemy’s face puffed fat with heat,
Hardening,
Splitting.
 
The air jerks.
A snap.
My hand opens like a flower.
One finger—
Gone.
 
Good.
Not an eye.
Not a lung.
Nine remain.
Enough to shape the dough.
I have typed with less.
 
I run
Because famine pulls harder than bullets.
I run
Facing the furnace breath of guns.
I run
Through the iron hail skinning the sky.
I run
 
And fall,
Mouth first
Into the grain of the earth.
 
Just before I sink—
The scent.
The burnished crust.
The breath of the bread
That has arisen.
 
Hassan Abdulrazzak


If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Hassan Abdulrazzak would be pleased to hear them