toast sweats on a kitchen counter in Highland, Illinois

by John Dorroh

Has there always been bread? I want to know,

I guess, part curiosity, part conspiracy of thought,

the stories in documents: Bible-black testaments

of wheat & chaff, nomads in Egyptian deserts

searching for mana, unleavened bread; Austrian

monks who assigned me early-morning tasks

to prepare the dough, popping bubbles

with a quill pen, fanning warm proofs like

tired hummingbirds. Process deserves respect.

My Cuisinart stainless steel toaster with its 

obvious defect jettisons my toast onto the counter

where it lies in state on fake faux formica. I transfer it 

to a saucer, admiring the saunaed history it leaves behind, 

a near-negative with mottled surface. A gentle heat rises

like ghosts from fields where silver-green choruses

bowed & waved in golden Kansas oceans, Saskatchewan 

prairies, or a thousand other places on a fantastic 

earth.

John Dorroh understands that words are more than some magic potion, that words engage themselves with the soul. He appreciates the work that went into each and every poem he reads in journals by every author. He thanks them. Three of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 fine journals such as Feral, River Heron, Pinyon, Burningword, The Orchards Poetry Journal, & North Dakota Quarterly. He had two chapbooks published in 2022.