Ode to My Father's Dead Tooth
- Ode to My Father's Dead Tooth
You mouthwink, you gray smatter, you smilefreckle.Can you tell me what it's like
to check out and stay anyway? Baseball bataftermath knocked out and replanted.
The silver crown on my canine mirroredby his flat gray finish, the mole on his neck
copied onto mine. The moles nearly touched whenwe sat in garage chairs burning ticks and berry bugs.
When I lost Silvertooth, the tooth fairy letme keep it. I wrote a note to ask. I said please.
My father said there's an empty spot on her necklacewhere it would have been the best pendant.
________
Teeth and all, we chose to burn him. We knowthe bones stay behind with coffin nails
and steel hinges. Usually the hip bones and shinbonesand most of all the young-person bones
hold up to the heat and flame and maybein this case the teeth, the tooth, dead [End Page 452]
and resilient will have made it. Maybeinstead of being ground down, the operator
put you in his pocket for good luck, a rabbit-footor calcium nudge, a coin in his coat, burning. [End Page 453]
chrissy martin is a PhD student at Oklahoma State University and has an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is the poetry editor for Arcturus and an editorial assistant for Cimarron Review. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, Breakwater Review, and Barzakh Magazine.
