TWo great green bottles she had, in which
there was once wine. She drank no wine, or not
in my small-child years. These bottles were for baking.

One she kept stoppered with a cork-lined rose of brass
for sprinkling water on dough; the other she gripped
by the neck in her great red hand, then rolled the dough

flat, flat enough for tortillas, had she known
what such things were. This was biscuit dough,
and she made work enough of it to last

the angry afternoon through. Thumping down
that green glass, rolling out, and reaching back
to thump that green glass down again, her arms

shook like wattles, and her naked elbows
cycled like hot piston rods.
There was noise enough in this work, from glass

on wood, a drum noise, but what I remember
was hers is silence, this silence of the woman
killing her bread instead of that man each day.