Fatherteeth

“See” by Lucie Ware

I flick the tooth with my tip tongue
& it knocks against its neighbors.
A sound, like the crack of a knuckle
& the tooth, grown      nickel-sized
falls into my palm—
Everyone at the airport has somewhere
to be as my smile            shakes loose.
Is it a dream? I don’t always know     
myself.              Sometimes I choke
on old bubblegum webbed between
my teeth. Or sometimes
      my mouth is a machine bent
on destroying itself:       tectonic teeth
collide, splinter. Bruises & bone dust    
         cover my wet bottom lip.
The Dictionary of Dreams tells me:
      “You may dream of tooth loss if  
you feel powerless,       out of control.
You may dream of tooth loss if
you cannot correct the Bronco in time,
for example. If you cannot
          stitch your father’s teeth
back into his head, for example. If you
cannot say        No more or just
No.”
(Not a dream:
Steeringwheel fissured every facebone
on impact. Slicedlightning.
Bodycaressed steeringcolumn.
.06seconds.
Bodyshucked & limp. Remember?
Remember?       He does not.)
You cannot
       swallow a whole mouthful
of teeth at once without consequence
even in a dream—this is pretty
straightforward dream science.
When I’m awake
my dentist tells me get a mouthguard
& melatonin.       My father tells me
    his dentures are impervious
to all manner of acids, sugars, & chemicals
as well as other havocs      he might invite
inside his mouth home.
When I’m awake
I do not chew gum.
But when I do, I chew until
my jaw is sore & popping.
My inheritance is this: I think about
my teeth more often than any other
                 bones in my body.

Ashley Brooke Dailey is pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where she is the Poetry Editor for Grist, volume 14. She is the winner of an Academy of American Poets prize and has previously worked as a high school English teacher and copy editor. You can follow her on Twitter @abdailey.