Man shares poem inspired by the Conshohocken Italian Bakery

Following the closure of the Conshohocken Italian Bakery after 51 years in business, Hugh Carter Donahue shared with MoreThanTheCurve.com a poem inspired by the bakery. The poem titled “Hoagie Madonna” was published a few years ago in a regional poetry anthology Pennsylvania Bards – Southeast Poetry Review.

Enjoy the poem.

With knowing, forgiving, soft, brown eyes,
Hoagie Madonna turns tables saying
‘Here you go, angel,’
handing a foot long, golden roll,
in crisp, 100%, recyclable ,
white, paper bag
when angel Gabriel
had trumpeted Mary
‘inclined her ear to the Word of God’
becoming pregnant with baby Jesus.
What to make of Hoagie Madonna.
perhaps her name, Annunciata,
embodying the Blessed Virgin,
two thousand years out.
What to make of flour, salt, water,
sugar, whey, cornstarch, soy,
cotton seed oil and wheat flour
proportioned meticulously, baked exactly,
a golden crust giving way to
folds of white bread
recalling fleshy delta and moist salts
enthralling touch and taste.
I visit the bakery,
its Italian oven
baking 6,000 hoagies an hour,
to purchase a fresh
roll for lunch
several days a week.
Virtually every other day,
the Hoagie Madonna gives me one
demurring on fifty-five cents,
two quarters and a nickel,
placed on the counter.
Perhaps she’s seeding recurrent sales
with stochastic generosities
confounding rational choice.
But, Hoagie Madonna’s generosity
is inescapably more and other.

Her Kindness,
enriching beyond nutrition,
scores attention.
Convenience store,
gas station hoagies
must be toasted
or else they’re mushy,
a commercial man attests.
Competing bakeries,
while fine, aren’t as good,
a hoagie vendor
commanding multiple locations
at big box superstores,
disposes authoritatively.
Time is a friend just now
affording the luxury of
visiting a Hoagie Madonna.
‘Through my hour of darkness,’
Hoagie Madonna is ‘standing right in front of me
shining words of wisdom.’
‘She makes me feel so good,
Lord, she makes me feel all right.’
With a gift outright
of a golden hoagie roll,
a bakery baby Jesus,
Hoagie Madonna signals
so much more than
striking it rich,
‘a happy idiot struggling for the legal tender,’
making ends meet,
letting things be or
shouting G-L-O-R-I-A
at touch and taste.
Her iridescent goodness
lights me as fresh Angel Gabriel
overshadowing profane rock eponym’s
material world.