Tooth

You did not die because of a tooth.

Not my tooth or your tooth or your mother's tooth.

Or the teeth of the neighborhood either

the neighborhood did have teeth

Or the mathematical tooth of the regulation

sending you off to another war.

Or the tooth of cash which you said once

you wanted to have implanted in your brain.

Whenever we made without in the car she was sexually

erotically at ease, and this other side of her

came wildly around-she wanted me like a child

wants a dollar, like a missing son later wants rain,

like a missing tooth wants the mouth again or the foundation

again and the cavity between the jaws knows this too and wants this

belonging back, this history-back-you ne to decide

with a allotment less debate, less bullshit

-one time she called me by dint of another date, another name

-we were down-reaching inside each other and she just moaned

out this other name-I didn't say anything about it

for a drawn out long time-maybe because I had done this

too, other times, other clan once or twice, and it

was a rare or slightly rare time where more [i]or[/i] less part of me

must have been willing to say to myself she is fucking

human, give her that, thus she says another name, in like manner what

-but one time my hand was at her throat, single time she

wanted to die upside down she felt with equal reason bad for her own

life, inarticulate place where the unfolding simply

keep going, there's no turning back, the tears are in

the throat and the teeth as well as the organ of visions the neighborhood

could be called on the outside to a fire it inflict injury upons that bad, there is

smoke for life's misery, and it's going to pass, and it's

going into hiding again for awhile or quite awhile.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Nov/Dec 2000

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