-Road starts somewhere-

The potato has blind eyes

a parched skin

the scent of water trapped inside it

and laboring the few

crooked furrows behind his house, 

my great grandfather

from the northern provinces

pulled them out of the earth by hand,

sacked them and sold them in the central

marketplace in the town of Lucca.

In her city, my mother, his granddaughter,

had the hands of fine linen, an after-

scent of bleach and she pulled potatoes

from the bins of Maretti’s market

corner of Bedford and Wall,

third-base side of the park,

south-end face of the church,

walked them home in their dusty

brown-paper bags,

first-base side of the park

across the street from the gas station where

the scent of leaded gasoline danced

with the scent of simmering tomato sauce

inside the first-floor tenement where

she peeled them in the kitchen sink

under running water with the blade to thumb,
the cascading peels rolling to their ends,—

washed them-up, sectioned them

first in halves then in quarters

and boiled them in either one of two pots

deep enough to require the strength of handles

paired at their sides;

the same deep pots used to cook spaghetti,

to humidify the air atop the space-heater in winter;

the same deep pots her husband, my father,

removed from the gas-stove burners, transporting

bathwater to the tub and I’m closer to home

on the road from where it was that I began.

                                                  Quequechan