“Bread”
by
Sharon Olds
When my daughter makes bread, a cloud of flour
hangs in the air like pollen. She sifts and
sifts again, the salt and sugar
close as the grain of her skin. She heats the
water to body temperature
with the sausage lard, fragrant as her scalp
the day before hair-wash, and works them together on a
floured board. Her broad palms
bend the paste toward her and the heel of her hand
presses it away, until the dough
begins to snap, glossy and elastic as the torso bending over it,
this ten-year-old girl, random specks of yeast
in her flesh beginning to heat,
her volume doubling every month now, but still
raw and hard. She slaps the dough and it crackles under her palm, sleek and
ferocious and still leashed, like her body, no
breasts rising like bubbles of air toward the surface
of the loaf. She greases the pan, she is
shaped, glazed, and at any moment goes
into the oven, to turn to that porous
warm substance, and then under the
knife to be sliced for the having, the tasting, and the
giving of life.
Biblioklept 