There’s a bakery where the library used to be,

By Judith Arcana
The Portland Upside
October 2009

Photo by Jonathan Arlook

In the fall of 2007, I asked Greg Mistell, baker and owner of the Fleur de Lis Bakery & Café in the Hollywood District, to donate a cake for an event. Because it was a literary event, our conversation led to writing. Greg mentioned he’d been an English major, a happy coincidence and perfect fit for a bakery located in Hollywood’s old library.

Perhaps because I’m a writer who eats a certain number of cookies each week, and perhaps because I live in an apartment above the new library, we wound up collaborating on a poetry-as-performance event, The Bakery Show, featuring local poets plus delicious dinners, drinks and treats from Fleur de Lis.

What with all that melding of words and bread, poetry and cake, I wrote this poem.

There’s a bakery where the library used to be,

so the baker is an English major, and his
gingerbread’s shining lemon glaze rhymes
with apricot scones, cinnamon rolls, thick
brownies demanding haiku-size bites. And
those fat doughnuts are classics, their holes
suggesting absent clues in mystery novels
whose pages flutter like flaky pastry around
sticky elements of the plot. Each berry tart
tells a story, each cookie’s a simple sentence
its crunchy sugar sparkles scattered like
commas through paragraphs, like dashes
for emphasis – and the very last crumb
on the plate is a period or exclamation point
or formally postmodern question mark.

When the baker is an English major, then
stoneground grain can be a metaphor, and
characters can be yeasty, strong salty citizens
who grow thoughtfully into goodness, work
to make it come out right, study recipes, learn
to combine necessary flavors and textures.
One character gets punched down but rises
shapes up, reveals a heart as rich as dark rye.
The narrator is sharp as a well-kept knife
every chapter seems a slice of real life, all
its ingredients mixed well. All the words are
folded carefully into fiction, memoir, sonnets
cooling on stacked metal trays, shelved there
like the books were, always bound to feed us.

Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books. Sometimes she stops writing and walks over to Fleur de Lis Bakery for cookies or bread. Visit her website at juditharcana.com