Sliced bread

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SLICED BREAD


In line, outside of the Hollywood Ralphs –

Security makes us wait.


So we wait, spacing ourselves;

On high alert for anyone who coughs.


I wonder if there is bread.

I have never wondered if there is bread before.


This is new.

Then I think of my grandfather


Waiting in some Russian bread line

On a snowy village street


While The Soviets

Pushed in from The Eastern Front.


Or my father – hungry, poor –

His teenage teeth already beginning to decay.


Stealing bread when he was

30 years younger than I am now.


What was the scene?

His 15-year-old mind


Calculating risk;

Plotting to feed his family.


Were his palms sweaty?

Did he innately calculate the math


Of a tiny heist

For some baked wheat?


For some reason,

I am comfortable thinking about bread.


In 1943, The United States Government

Banned sliced bread


In some sort of attempt

To reduce the consumption


Of flour, or steel, or wax paper,

Or paraffin –


There was a theory

Whole loaves of bread


Might reduce flour prices;

Help bakeries keep costs down.


Who the hell really knows?

But here I am,