Work-in-Progress
- Work-in-Progress
Daily Bread of Lenawee Soup Kitchen, Adrian, Michigan
Each week like magic, a muralblooms a little farther along a wall
inside the soup kitchen.Each week – where outlines
of those kneeling by a river,addressing a hungry crowd
or holding up empty bowlshave been waiting for color
to fill them, show them howto work, teach, weep, hope.
There are crosses, men in long robesand hands raised toward the sky. [End Page 52]
Skin-and-bone farmers plant seedsin dry earth and an old woman
pushes a shopping cart past a manasleep in a dumpster. It is a story
of bread and water and distances.It is a human scene,
repeated in the livesmoving through the soup kitchen
each day between noon and two.There is already a signature
in one corner,but we never see the artist. [End Page 53]
Jennifer Burd received an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of Washie ington in 1994. She has worked as an instructional designer, editor, and newspaper reporter. Currently, when not dancing, taking photographs, or thinking about metaphor, she edits books for High/Scope Press in Ypsilanti, MI. Burd's poems have appeared in The Bellingham Review, Southern Poetry Review, Eclipse, Modern Haiku, and the anthology Nobody's Orphan Child, among other publications. She resides in Ypsilanti, MI.
