Greer



**CHORD**
BY STUART DYBEK

A man steps out of sunlight, sunlight that streams like grace,

still gaping at blue sky staked across the emptiness of space,

into a history where shadows assume a human face.

A man slips into silence that began as a cry,

still trailing music although reduced to the sigh

of an accordionas it folds into its case.


 * Pumpernickel**

Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye, onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for, pumpernickel that demanded cornmeal, ripe caraway, mashed potatoes & several Old Testament stories about patience & fortitude & for which she cursed in five languages if it didn’t pop out fat as an apple-cheeked peasant bride. But bread, after all, is only bread & who has time to fuss all day & end up with a dead heart if it flops? Why bother? I’ll tell you why. For the moment when the steam curls off the black crust like a strip of pure sunlight & the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem pulling out of its own stubborn complexity a single glistening truth & who can help but wonder at the mystery of the human heart when you hold a slice up to the light in all its absurd splendor & I tell you we must risk everything for the raw recipe of our passion.

 1. **Imagery**- explains with detail to make a picture in your mind to help understand the story of how the bread is made and make picture in your mind.  2. **Cool vivid words**- "apple cheaked peasent bride." it uses these words to explain the picture of the bread and it put emphasis on the bread so that you can see it in your head.  3. **Similes**- "the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem pulling out of his own stuborn complexity." it uses like or as to explain the hard labor of making the bread.