Alison C. Rollins

After a Nick Cave “Soundsuit” made from buttons and found vintage abacus When George Washington became president in 1789 he had only one tooth in his head, a single premolar poking up from his gums. His dent- ures were fashioned from lead, gold wire springs, brass screws, the teeth of humans and cows, ele- phant ivory, and hippopotamus bone. It is a myth that he had false teeth made of wood. A mis- perception put forth by those misled by the hair- line fractures that ivory and bone possess. Just as cherry wine will stain cloth with a rust-hued vein, Washington’s fondness for dark wine blemished his teeth. The fractures eventually darkening, un- til resembling the grain in a piece of wood. The darkening of fractures is rather curious. The makeup of the flesh, the constitution of origin, the trackers of bloodlines thrown off the trail. It is difficult to determine what discolor- ations have tunneled their way through the body. Spider veins climbing the back of my legs like a winding river mapping the trauma. An unspoken collective of ephemeral bits and bytes, suffering most eloquently preserved in the mouth. The skin of one’s teeth decides many a fate. A black woman’s incisor settling down inside a white man’s maw. Overall, a quizzical look, an off-color joke about progress, the very blood a trick of the eye, an ocean blue on the outside of the skin, a blushing red if viewed just beneath the sheath. • A tooth is made up of the crown and the root, all the King’s Men destined to revolt. There are many ways to worm your way inside, many open- ings in the body of an animal. Some orifices gated with white entryways. A wooden portcullis, a pick- et fence, a laced corset secured tightly by a maid, a pointed geode just waiting to be pulled, the cavern wall glittering in the dark. Sharp crystals ornament the cave’s jawbone.Cave canem, quite naturally speak- ing. A hooded hole a place for some to hide or go seek. A toothless whistle the signal for the slave hunting bloodhounds, with canines fanged like water moccasins. The swamp mud gushing like the suppertime mush sloshing between the gums of a Confederate soldier. The terror of limbs at odds with the self. In World War I, trench foot meant frequent amputations, the blade sliding like floss between each toe. Some diseases attack the foot or mouth, gums left inflamed in the cross fire. A grieving mother wears dog tags around her neck. Her son’s baby shoes and teeth cast in bronze. The pulp at the center is how the tooth receives nourishment, how it transmits signals to the brain. The forgetting makes the present tense possible. Memory is the gravity of the mind. All the icebergs have started to melt, milky objects left hanging by a string, the doorknobs means to an end. • The keyboard’s toothy smile splayed wide, the flatlined cursor blinks impatiently on the screen, my fingers struggle to tap into word processing. I monitor all of the track changes. Even the computer is a slave to death. Its in- nards already bygone, its body obsolete upon year of purchase. I am a librarian, swimming the digital divide, my predecessor’s paddles — a mass of floppy disks in an office closet. They pile up like the teeth of slaves waiting for sale. An affluent businessman at the door, his hands panning the saliva for white gold. His fingers parting the cavity, pursed lips cooing, I need something of yours to call my own. The desire to chew and smile at will. My grandmother lost her mind before her teeth, lost the memories be- fore the enamel gave way to rot. My face has my mother’s abacus features. We are, in fact, diphyo- dont. In one lifetime we develop two sets of teeth. The missing space filled with air, a hollow exile before the native tongue. I pray my unborn child will have a gap. What the French call “dents du bonheur” or lucky teeth. The womb’s peephole is rather impressionable. I will fasten the buttons of time. I will take the baby’s body in my own, whisper a plea in its discriminating ear: Try to keep your wits about you, my love. Memory is about the future, not the past.

We is gator teeth hanging from the rear- view mirror as sickle cells suckle at Big Momma’s teats. We is dragonfly choppers hovering above Walden Pond. We is spinal cords shedding like the skin of a cottonmouth. We is Psalm 23 and the Pastor’s chattering chicklets. We is a good problem to have. We is throats constricting and the grape juice of Jesus. We is Roach and Mingus in Birdland. We is body electric, eyes watering with moonshine, glossy lips sticky with lard. We is half brothers in headlock, arm-wrestling in the dirt. We is Vaseline rubbed into knocked knees and cracked elbows. We is ham hocks making love to kidney beans. We is Orpheus, lute in hand, asking do we have a problem

b-boy Wordsworth beatbox vocal cord code switching through the wheat fields at daybreak clicking his teeth against the corn’s high yellow thighs prying open like the sunlight’s tear ducts on the morning the moon forgot how to speak Twi the cicadas having screeched all night in Old English like a man who has forgotten his name calling out the leaves of grass as though stalks of letters at right angles have meaning a way of theorizing the rhetoric of beauty a fig tree trembling at the rain’s hungry lick a finch weaving myth into a nested crown of logic the wildflowers’ arms on dial-up internet a virgin using the petals as her service provider he loves me, he loves me not, with every flick of her wrist the wind knowing the typeface her lips are set in pockmark cheeks peppered with salt the politics of resentment seasoning the spittle true poems flee like a slave in Mississippi Googling “home” with no filter or cookies the tuning fork having shorted in the eardrum’s mouth the devil was in the details when he read the star’s hands prongs of a serpent’s embrace, steam dancing on a cloud’s rolled tongue, wet and pregnant with words so soft the dirt could swallow the sound what must we remember, to forget how we were born? when we ask for advice it is rather for permission for we know not what we do when we do it in free will a robot puts a conch shell to its lips and blows a man puts a seashell to his ear and hears the ocean tell a lie long enough and it will surely turn to truth

In ancient Greece, for all her heroes, for Medea    ...    water meant death. — Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones i poured a bowl of cereal, threw the empty box in the trash can. granddaddy pulled the box from the trash, poured the crumbs into a bowl, then doused the sand in milk. he looked down at the bowl, murmuring about how he had survived the depression. told a story about asking for hot water at colored diners, how he would pour ketchup in cups to make soup. this was how i first learned i am wasteful. • i would stand in the bathroom with my mother. would ask her why the water in the bowl was red. she would tell me she had eaten beets. i suppose i was too young to learn the truth, milkflowers spill petals red. • in my catholic school of fish, we took a beautifully wrapped box, passed it around the class, unwrapping it piece by piece. afterwards it was cleverly explained that the box is a girl’s virginity the gift we give our husbands. & who wants a toy that has already been opened? half the joy is in untying the string. this is how i was taught that at my very core, i am ungrateful. • i met someone recently, in an irish bar, who told me it’s about knowing what i need. he said later what you need is a wife

For the time being an ampersand is a boy clutching his knees to his chest as art. On high, the god of form wears a face on each wrist. Only a god can take and give time,butthe one in front of the gun lasts forever

Before Gilgamesh invented the kaleidoscope and Galileo the Rubik’s cube, before the scimitar-horned oryx went missing, before the tamarind trees went bare, before the stars’ eyelids were wrapped in tinfoil, before the leaves could gnaw on water, before electrons made donations, before the owl wore a mask, before the wind had a sound, before the moon had a name and the smoke a spine, before the tulips crossed their legs, before the tongue was armored, before the ghosts rode centaurs to riots, before cyberspace was culled and belly buttons sown to wombs, before the taste had an after, before intellect became property and thunder premeditated, before the New, New World, before a stone wished to be more than a stone, before we had a change of clothes, before the grass was color-blind, before the rivers lost their fingers, and the rain stopped teething, before the kings were all beheaded, the gravedigger neither young nor old, before a lion was still a lion, before the girls were all killed, before the trapeze gave way.        We hung           suspended in time by the arches of our curved feet and this tickled the gods, tickled them to death.        & I think our silence cut us loose, let us go falling from the doubt, secretly thrilled at the hems and ever so eager to break.

After Robert Hayden’s “Bone-Flower Elegy” In the dream I enter him I      the eater of numbers the black-lipped barcode of cost have come for him because he owes me. He owes me the broken machine the bone structure gone limp over leg of time. I      irreverent as safe sex breathlessly whispering this is not a threat but a promise