A leaf is a spoon, fingers a fork.
Meals are eaten with the whole hand.
White kidney beans, boiled cassava;
crushed peanuts on white kidney beans;
boiled cassava wrapped in banana leaves.
Roasted peanuts / beans.
After eating, fingers are licked and rinsed
in a bowl placed on the cement floor-table.
Alex, the oldest grandchild, washes up.
He pours water from the rain barrel
into a dented, tin basin blackened by soot.
Although the soap doesn’t sud—
chipped plates and bowls shine.
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Gail Langstroth is an international lecturer, eurythmy performer, and poet. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she is an active member in the Mad Women in the Attic writing workshops. The Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize, 2011, Accents Chapbook Competition, finalist, 2014, and the Jeffster Award, 2014, account for some of her literary achievements. Her poems have appeared in Citron Review, Clay Bird Review, Clementine, Passager, Rune, Rust + Moth, and Yemassee. In 2016, Langstroth released her film, In & & &. Her latest eurythmy productions: TIERRADENTRO, and mute silence premiere in Spain, South America and NYC, 2016.
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Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His photography prompt book for writers, From Vision to Text, is forthcoming from Propertius Press.
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