My Own Teeth

I’m afraid of my own teeth
Sudden bony billy clubs
in the soft tissue
of my mouth, Bowie knives
lacerating my lips;
Tongue butchers.
What are they doing there?
What creator
designed such an anomaly
to house thirty-two enameled soldiers,
mandibularly backed mercenaries, in this barrack
of tender pinkness?

© Jilly’s  All Rights Reserved

For Day 6 of 28 Days of Unreason

“Her nights are full of the red teeth of death”
Jim Harrison, from Life / Dead Man’s Float

• For the record: I pulled these Harrison lines back in January, not knowing exactly when the challenge would begin or how the days would fall.  As many of you know, I spent yesterday a bit loopy on the after-effects of sedation over a root-canal redo.  When I saw the prompt for today, I had already made that appointment.  It garnered a laugh on my part and today’s poem just seemed appropriate.  The time in the chair yesterday was slight and completely painless, but my inability to find a sense of the vertical or my inner compass made the whole day rather silly. This poem is written in that light.  Life is funny that way; don’t you agree? 🙂  Cheers! ~Jilly

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