Beans and Bread

If we sit and talk of beans and bread,
death without hesitation,
will you remember me, Joseph,
radio-electric, standing in cold
drum-apple rain?

These things will die
in our silver-water ears,
eat piano colors before they
reach our sputtering eyes;
they are vaseline covered mouths,
snap-necked and blue.

This day is scribbled browns,
yellow leaves porch-dead,
velvet lined bird throats;
still, we refuse to speak.

First appeared in Lily Literary Review, Jan. 2006

Michael Paul Ladanyi