Bread and Fumes
is available through Kelsay Books (publisher),
Amazon, or Newtown Bookshop.
Reading Bread and Fumes is like watching someone turn the pages in a family album of tautly composed snapshots. Each moment is doubly seen—with both the sensory immediacy of a young girl’s experience and her greater insight as an adult. Graceful in their economy, the double consciousness of these poems perfectly suits their speaker’s situation as the daughter of an Eastern European father who survived a Nazi labor camp only to flee from a Stalinist occupation. There is joy here and community, even as the child of a trauma survivor learns to “live with a fire breathing dragon.”
— Randall Couch, poet
A Trip to European Provisions
My father asks if I'd like to come along
with him to the delicatessen. Yes! Yes!
I inhale pork kielbasa, sauerkraut,
cured meats and smoked fish.
He orders a half pound of sliced headcheese
and liverwurst, a ring of kyshka, and a loaf
of rye bread varnished with egg white.
At the register, I eye some candies shaped
like miniature bottles— filled with liqueur!
My father grins, delighted at my enthusiasm.
Can I have one? I select a few of the treats
wrapped in jewel tone cellophane.
Before reaching home, I bite off a chocolate top,
relish the sweet liqueur inside.
My father asks if I'd like to come along
with him to the delicatessen. Yes! Yes!
I inhale pork kielbasa, sauerkraut,
cured meats and smoked fish.
He orders a half pound of sliced headcheese
and liverwurst, a ring of kyshka, and a loaf
of rye bread varnished with egg white.
At the register, I eye some candies shaped
like miniature bottles— filled with liqueur!
My father grins, delighted at my enthusiasm.
Can I have one? I select a few of the treats
wrapped in jewel tone cellophane.
Before reaching home, I bite off a chocolate top,
relish the sweet liqueur inside.
