Benjamin Faro

Grain

If not cold starter, then
sunlight and a rising, then
bacteria performing miracles,
multiplying. We need miracles
these days—another life bursting
through the bursting
of what you call it when
you’re tired and you lose it, when
you say a word so many times you only
hear the letters, not its meaning—only
bread
                                        life, this is your bread,
this knuckled calcium bending in your hands—
clasp them—call them your Jesus hands
because how much more is possible?
What we know of life is it’s impossible;
so when you’re grinding emmer with a stone,
consider it your mother’s stone,
that through it she is working,
so crushing is her working.

Benjamin Faro is a green-thumbed writer and educator living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is currently pursuing his MFA at Queens University of Charlotte, where he served as poetry editor for Issue 17 of Qu Literary Magazine. He is also the editor of Equatorial Literary Magazine, an international curation of undergraduate poetry. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears or is forthcoming in About Place Journal, EcoTheo Review, Nimrod International Journal, Portland Review, TIMBER Journal, West Trade Review, and others.