"Dental Hygiene."
"My desk looks at my broken mouth the way
I'd look at a child who innocently--"
oh, I'm sorry-- "innocently yells the word nigger then
smiles.
Oh, baby Jesus, is there an alibi for this?
That's what I hear beneath those weekly sighs, poverty, child
abuse?
Look at this.
He sighs and gives me the Yiddish word for dirt.
And I understand by his tone that a person who
carries this word between his teeth
chooses to live somewhere beyond kinship.
Look at this, he sighs.
Exposing the residue of a ton of meals to the light.
Hard yellow diamonds of what I like, of what I have swallowed,
will swallow again.
He tut-tuts again in Yiddish as he scrapes.
And I see myself dressed in sackcloth, singing in this poem
as I stumble barefoot through the marketplace rattling
my fool black teeth out."