500 Bakeries

500 bakeries line the street north of my house.

A doughnut. Fried bread. That’s all I wanted. The first one didn’t have any. Instead he offered me a foot, human, on a piece of white china. The plate had blue ink spilled across it.

The next bakery was no better. A severed breast was thrust toward me — quivering and threatening to flip — on a Grecian dish. The cooks gazed at me with anxiety. I left it sitting on the counter. They screamed obscenities at me as I stepped out into the street, cursing my lineage with sharp, lopsided words, hitting me at an angle through their thick Greek accent and sliding down my entire future genealogy.

The next bakery had perfected the softening of a human tooth. They laid the pile before me and gave me a spoon.

The next one told me what to look for in searching for my request. It was an hour’s walk up the road. They assured me I’d find what I was looking for there.

After two hours I arrived at the bakery and placed my order. The workers seemed rejuvenated, laced with enthusiasm and speed. They made it fresh: out to the field in the back, grains pulled and pinched with grubby fingers, ground with grubby knuckles (the pestle) into the stone mortar, grind the grain, grinding the skin on top of the knuckles, flecks of bone. Milked the cow ’til tits ran dry and seeped only clear liquid. Made the dough, then to the vats — the boiling bubbling tubs of oil with crusted animal fat two inches thick on all sides, never cleaned nor scraped lest the taste suffer. The classic family taste.

Dough resting on the bottom and bubbling. Rusted tongs reach in and pull it out and put it on a plate of silver in front of me, seething in a puddle of yellow like urine.