Sheila Black Mabel Bakes a Pie (Dead Since 1989) Your hands swollen as gloves hover over the dented tin canisters. Flour lifting its little cloud. A stickiness of spilled sugar. Knead just enough to keep the tenderness. As for the fruit, never so sweet you can't taste it. When you left the children, buttoned your cloth coat with the mink collar, your purse the size of a child's boat, to search the farthest bars, walking because he had taken the only car. A good crust doesn't stick in the mouth, but shatters. What we both know: Love turns cold shoulders. A country yielded, conquered. Beside the highway where you paused: Two crushed cans, a shredded sack of brown paper, the river with its barges leaking oil, railroad tracks opening out like thread, the friendly light of a window, the slurred voices within. Where you might find him; where you stopped looking, no longer even listening for his footfall, except as a cue to even your breathing. Your hands now pitiless over flour and Crisco, you reach to touch my wrist. No accident you have come here. A blue ribbon pie, you say, is one made without any fuss. You can't act as if you care. You only do what needs to be done.

---