Mask

after Gwendolyn Brooks

I sit spin
I lose win
I cry grin

I quiet loud
I shy proud
I show shroud

I you me
I lone we
I lonely

---

The Dream of My Teeth

You slowly fell apart
Dissolved into dust 
In a river of spit
Cracked crags 
Ancient tusk

I used to use that part of my body …

To rend sweet memory
Of Flesh
(a wet bloody hole)

…. and time trod on in its steady grey way

Eventually each Loss
Came without surprise
I began a collection
Wound them round my neck
Like a string of antique pearls

---

Matter | Antimatter

For every thing there is an equal
and opposite thing, {another: action/object}
a/symmetry
that weighs us to and repels us from
the moment they meet there is an instant
annihilation {another: greater illumination}

What I want is so far from what I need
superpositioned as a crux we call will
power is not a fundamental property of life as it is
the opposite the antagonist the antiparticles—
{another: the partner}

The galactic center is a cloud of antimatter
that balances us on a profusion of invisible strings
above the abyss {another: nothingness}
Invert inversion and see again how nothing
is still something if we give it enough
attention {another: sweet satellite}

You are not equal {another: identical}
to me you are not the opposite {another: contradiction}
either the cosmos is inflating like a womb or decay
And all I have are these dumb words
To separate desire from require {another: end}

---

The Impacted

Sun filled the office so that the entire room was white with the exception of the  appliances: the faucet, the picks, several rows of piping that led into the floor.  On the wall, there was a blanched photograph framed in refracted light.  So, between the sun and adjustable overhead that Larry lowered to his face, the man was entirely white-washed and almost glowing.  

“It smarts.”  The man winced as Larry lightly brushed the convex outline of his cheek.   The doctor sat up, pushing his stool back, and silently eyed the face before him.  It was round and white and possessed a calm knowing.  Moon-faced.  

The doctor moved and his eyes caught the sign on the door that read Larry Nussbaum, D.D.S..  “Okay.  Open up – aaaah.”  A hole appeared in the man’s face and a tongue slipped over his lower lip.

Inside the wet cave of his mouth, the man’s right third molar sat in the deep ditch of a receding gum. “Never got your wisdom teeth taken out?”  Larry asked, leaning back.  He reached for an instrument.

“I was afraid.”  The man said simply.  His hands sat folded atop his full midsection.  He was expressionless, looking straight ahead into the spotlight.

            Larry shook his head and frowned behind his paper mask.  “Nothing to be afraid of…”

The man cut him off with a blunt “I can’t.”

Stopped at a red light earlier, Dr. Larry saw a large portrait of a blonde spraypainted on the side of a building.  In one hand, someone had written Kim Novak.  In another, Candy Darling. Larry didn’t know either name.  The woman held her stomach and Larry mouthed a silent word to himself, quickening.

The man now kept his hands clenched together in a knot in the center of his stomach, covering much of itsprotrusion.  A glowing, vibrating orb.  It pulsed, it kicked out in retaliation against its everything that held it. Rooting for this rotting tooth.  Finally, in his pathetic meek voice, Larry said, “I’m sorry, sir.  It has to come out.”

The man began to cry.  It was loud and messy.  Dr. Larry didn’t move. He said nothing to comfort him.  

A stream of words came out between the man’s staccato breathes.  “I am afraid – I am afraid of what is secret and awful inside me.  Do you know strength? What I can do with my hands?  I can’t control it.  I’m afraid of where things are broken.  And I’m afraid of breaking things myself.  I can’t stand it – this pain – I don’t want it but, then, sometimes I think I’d be  scared to lose it.”  He was sunk in the reclined chair and, as Dr. Larry looked down, it was as if he was melting. 

From the man’s perspective, he was looking up into a halo of light and Dr. Nussbaum’s obscured but shining face that had lost all pigment.  Then, in slow sure words, he said, “It is a part of me.”

Dr. Larry Nussbaum had no idea what this all meant.  He looked down at his gloved hands.  The baby powder inside felt it separated everything from his touch by a soft skin.  He did not know what to say. What he did know was that there was something alien inside this man and it had to be extracted.  Otherwise, it would eat away at this man’s awful, secret insides like a golden germ.