Alex Vidiani
STONE FOOD

My food was stones from
a stone tree spoon-fed to me

stones in my mouth slurring
my speech so I couldn’t say

love you couldn’t say daddy
only stones I wonder

if my father was also fed stones
during a snowstorm in February

I wonder what he thought
as he smoked stone cigarettes

before seeing me for the first time
the only time I wonder how I felt

newborn in my father’s stone
hands marble-carved from winter

Alex Vidiani is an MFA student at the University of Maryland, College Park. In his spare time, he enjoys wingtips, café-hopping, and marathons of Mad Men. If you buy him a drink he will be your friend forever. His work has been published in Juked and The Summerset Review.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #12.