Garlic Bread

Baugettes, Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, Anchorage. [TWCarns Photo]



Streamlined torpedo.

Exterior, a hard brittle crust,

but it’s a sham.

At your core,

you are soft and yielding.



Indulgent tang

of garlic minced in butter.

My lips are slick

with guilty pleasure.



Did your ancestors

come through Ellis Island?

Did they lose

the French surname Pain,

to help you fit in

with this hodgepodge

of western food?



I see your great grandfather

strapped to the back of a bicycle

being pedaled up

the steep cobbled streets

of Montmartre.



Did he spend time

in a sidewalk café,

a third at the table

with Hemingway and Joyce

sharing a bottle of Bordeaux?



Would he look

on his Americanized descendant

with the disdain

of a Parisian waiter?



Paul Winkel
Anchorage, March 29, 2014




Streets of MontMarte in Paris,, ephotozine.com picture.