Monday Poems: "Toast" - by John Holbrook

The night I tore out the kitchen sink,
the old counter board
and musty flour bins,
the framing studs,
lath and plaster,
I found stuck against the wall
a two cent stamp,
grocery receipts,
razors in thin paper,
a magazine snipping
showing a school boy facing
a plate full of toast.
A caption read: "Put
the toast in his notebook."

I mosey among stars on my break,
confident under the crisp
magnificent indifference.
In counter tops
I like butcher board veneer.
I like cupboard doors
with a natural wood finish.
I like my bread swathed
with apricot jam.
Though I'm prone to dally,
the caption was too bizarre to ignore.
The sink works. The notebook is filling.
Stars are spotless and abundant ...
this is where the toast pops up.

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John Holbrook's poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including: Antacus, the Carolina Quarterly, Comstock Review, Cutbank, and the Southern Poetry Review. He lives and writes in Missoula, Montana. "Toast" was published in his 2010 collection, A Clear Blue Sky in Royal Oak.