El Día de los Muertos
Ten candied skulls are lined up ghoulishly
upon the shelves of La Boca Negra Bakery.
Though some stare gleefully at passersby,
others glare vacantly this All Saints’ Day
into hot blasts of yeasty steam that waft
out like dreams from fiery ovens in the back.
Three whitened bakers exercise strong hands
to work doughy miracles in a careful dance
with time—The dead are all around us here,
and everywhere, though we are blind as air
and only feel their earnest gaze when knives
of loss peel back the stupor of our lives.
Hunger barely masks the longing in their eyes,
for they dine emptily upon our sighs,
yet hope to harvest sweetness from our breath:
the dead love us with tacit tenderness.
Behind the bakery, the Sunday mourners
picnic on the graves of family members.
Shivering in the cold, sucking the sugary bones
of their ancestors, expectant mothers intone
the names of their unborn, lives swelling like bread
leavened in the invisible arms of the dead.