South End Stew: Dust

by Leija Farr

Dust is dead skin cells
Bobbing against wood into a godless
corner where the sun is never soft.
No grandmother to explain
cobwebs,
draping over cabinets.
A perfection that mimics a prayer
you swallowed along with a country.
A language
A song.
And before you know it, your stomach
is a hallway
Folded between clinking bone.
The walls are thick, so no one will know what lives and dies here.
They will only know that you lost track of God,
Searching the summer
for stick jazz
and porcelain,
and another human body with a hallway