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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Signifying Bread














By Justine C. Tajonera

My puzzles are different:
consisting of images
and words.

Words have always
puzzled me:
the frame of anything real,
symbols one after the
other,
signifying bread.

The way I say bread,
the way I remember a poem*
that talks about a woman
dismantling bread
in her hands,
the expelling of breath
when one says the word
bread.

The bread of life,
the secret life of
bread,
the meaning of bread
or its meaningless-
ness.

The taste of bread
which is very different
for each person
in this world,
the different kinds
of bread

and how bread is not
what rice is
to me.

I remember how I
broke down the word,
how it became alien
to me.

I must have been seven,
on the way to someone's house.
As we turned the corner,
I realized how bread
was a word
and not the bread
itself
but how the bread
itself would not
exist
without the word.

And the word
was made
flesh
and the flesh
was signified
by bread.

(Jan. 5, 2010)

*the poem is "Meditation at Lagunitas" by Robert Hass

This poem is inspired by the book Flow, written by  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frozenchipmunk/195132188/

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