Brenda Shaughnessy's poem "Rise" is a very interesting (and surprising) connection between baking and revenge. Initially the title did not cause me to imagine a fresh loaf baking in the oven, but instead conjured up ideas of surmounting and overcoming adversity. The first stanza solidifies those imagined scenes:

I can't believe you've come back,
like the train I missed so badly, barely,
which stopped & returned for me. It scared me,
humming backwards along the track

This stanza plays off of an emotion that we can all relate to- the hollow loss associated with the unfortunate mis-timing of an arrival. Whether it's the bus, a deadline, or a train, we are all capable of identifying with that gut-wrenching feeling that is resultant from our engagement leaving us behind. The reader's identification with the speaker's sentiment creates a stronger impact when she writes "like the train I missed so badly, barely, which stopped & returned for me". Ah, the relief that must come with that experience! I certainly have never witnessed the BART stopping and returning for me (much to my dismay), yet the speaker does not emphasize her exultation, instead she writes "It scared me, humming backwards along the track". In these lines she takes an emotion that the reader identifies with, and flips it. Rather than focusing on the fact that her destination will no longer be missed, she is mesmerized by the eery return of the train- moving in a direction it should not, towards a stop that it should not make. Why would it do this? What are its motives? Can the sudden change in direction be trusted? These deeper-seated questions relate back to the first line of the poem, "I can't believe you've come back". The interpersonal connection between the speaker and the audience "you" is explained in terms of an industrialized mechanical form of transportation. The disbelief described as a surreal, almost terrifying experience.

The initial feeling of distrust that is established in the first stanza begins to change in the second. Much like the subtle changes of a relationship, the speaker's emotions change steadily, slowly and are exhibited in her actions and thoughts throughout the remaining stanzas. In the second stanza the tables have shifted, the speaker is now in a position where she seems to be convincing her beloved to return the affection that she is giving. She writes "you remember you were mine./ You may resist, you will relent." I find the last line of this stanza to be particularly interesting. The difference between the words "will" and "may" lend themselves to interesting interpretations of the verbs resist and relent (both of which are rather harsh). To describe the engagement in a relationship with the verbs resist and relent makes it sounds like there's a little too much coercion happening. At the same time though, the speaker's phrasing of the sentence conveys a sense of familiarity with the beloved to the reader- the speaker knows that her beloved will resist succumbing to his/her feelings initially, but in time he/she will allow him/herself to experience them. It's a process that the couple must have gone through before, and our speaker knows this full well. Regardless, there's an unavoidable feeling of sexuality in the last line, coupled with the earlier possessive line "you were mine", and I can't help being skeptical of what's to come.

In the third stanza the speaker ties in the baking of bread with her relationship. She writes:

At home in fire, desire is bread
whose flour, water, salt, and yeast,
not yet confused, are still, at least
in the soil, the sea, the mine, the dead.

I love this stanza. The description of baking as "confusing" is really neat. The speaker explains how all of the ingredients required to bake bread are in their elemental states, awaiting their procurement. Just as her and her beloved's feelings of desire are. Everything is ready, simply in need of a little confusion. Their desire awaits in the soil, the sea, the mine, the dead. Such vague and descriptive origins, each of them elemental and raw. Unaltered. Much like the desire between our speaker and her beloved, perhaps? I'm not jumping to any conclusions just yet.

The final stanza completes the emotional transformation.

I have all I longed for, you
in pleasure. You missed me, you body swelling.
Once more, you lie with me, smelling
of almonds, as the poisoned do.


The first line is, at a quick glance, very enduring if read alone. "I have all I longed for, you/". But before the reader can revel in the sweetness of the line, your eyes are forced to strike the words "in pleasure". Ouch. I guess the motives weren't so innocent. It doesn't appear that love or commitment were what our speaker was out to find. The stanza continues, "Once more, you lie with me, smelling of almonds, as the poisoned do." So I had to look into this reference...almonds? Apparently several strains of undomesticated almonds are poisonous at very low doses, and these almonds have bitter tastes and scents.

After my first quick read this piece struck me as poem of love that was rediscovered, but the last line haunted me into reading it again. "As the poisoned do". There is so much in that line! Poisoned implicates motive and intent- someone had to actively poison the beloved for him/her to be deemed as such. So I read it again, and in between the lines that could easily come off as love-bound and innocent there lurks a darker, revengeful, and malicious speaker. The bread that is related to the relationship of the poem ends up being the vessel through which the speaker poisons her beloved (maybe we need a new term for him/her...). The original feelings of overcoming adversity come rushing back...it wasn't the rising up of an old love flame, it was the rising up of the speaker against an old lover who must have wronged her in some sense. She overcame tribulation. She rose, as the bread rose, as the ex-lover fell.