Robbie Gamble's poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Stonecoast Review, and Poet Lore. He works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston.
Nothing more iconic
than a Parker House Roll
but Ho was just
a clean-shaven young man
in exile set on learning
rituals of the Western kitchen
kneading proofing shaping
flinging battalions of dough
into coal-fired tunnels
and now I press my thumbs
into a crescent-shaped crust
it resists breaks open
spilling a steaming waft
of mud charred foliage
suppurating flesh
and then the musty grief
that filled the church
for Dev Cochrane
who lived down the street
shipped out then shot in the throat
when his platoon was overrun
classified as MIA
after two years waiting
his mother couldn’t
stand it held a funeral
I was just a kid in a pew
listening to his sisters sob
impatient to get home
for tomato soup and crackers
in our wainscoted kitchen
the tock of the cuckoo clock
the TV snapped off for meals
none of those icons
Johnson’s doughy jowls
Ho’s steamy wisp of goatee
while we ate
just a flat awareness
that some things barely grasped at
might forever stay missing
like in all that later
documentary footage
the absent stench of combat •
