Mandy Shunnarah
Nobody
ever asks who
baked the bread,
coaxed the yeast &
flour with alchemy, or
beckoned its rise with knuckles
& patience. Nobody asks who smoked
the fish, much less who caught them, whose
boat floated on the choppy Mediterranean waters,
harnessing the wind & rushing to shore ahead of a storm.
No one asks who built the boat, who sliced trunks of olive trees
to planks & molded them into a hull to hold the catch of the day.
To say nothing of the nets, the hands that braided rope & knotted lengths
thousands of times to haul a wriggling silver mass. No one asks who scraped
the scales, whose fingers bled from the blades of aquatic armor, whose fingers plied
toothpick bones to keep them from children’s throats. This is the gradual labor miracles
ignore. Easier to remember a man on a pedestal who did it all by himself, all without any help.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born Appalachian and Palestinian American writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. They are the winner of the Porter House Review 2024 Editor’s Prize in Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar and are supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, will be released in July 2024 from Belt Publishing. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.
Artwork: “Fulcrum” by Fahed Shehab
Acrylic on canvas