stonetooth

on my knees i look for teeth 

on the muddy ground by the backyard creek

toads stare at the air with unblinking eyes and their croak

is the sound my heart makes when its overfilled itself

and spends its night with its hands on the porcelain

coughing up years of accumulated rot

but when the toad makes the sound it is for love

when I do, it is not

I remember my mother’s snaggle tooth, a curved fang

amidst a cream-suited procession, a snake in the hutch

I remember my dead lover’s snaggle tooth, twisted to face

inwards towards his comrades, a traitor in the ranks

nothing beautiful is perfect

I’ll remember what’s been misplaced long after 

everything symmetrically sound has been wiped away

I have such the same malformity, 

though not as front-and-fringe 

to notice you’d have to reach in to touch it, 

to find it, hiding shyly, curling in on itself

There is a Physiognomist smoking a pipe in my head 

this is a sign of a crooked character, he tells me

good, I say, so let us be crooked

it is better for our branches to reach out to the light

I love to love liars and I love to be loved despite

how I cry as frogs cry, merely part of a larger orchestra

of homeless buskers that play for no one but themselves

(for who else is there to play for but ourselves?)

I pick a tooth from the creek, or perhaps a tooth-shaped stone. 

This will do just fine I think, it’ll fit in well enough with my own

this is the thing about a broken heart

it should be treated no differently than a broken bone

we speak of doom and sore-crossed stars, monologue

about the predestined tragedy of it all

but perhaps fate is always changing its mind 

its eyes are cast on the rug not the threads

and our little weaver is bored and tired and knows 

accidents will happen; people will fall

we set it back into place with a shout or a whimper

wrap it up with a shirt or paper, then we’re a little 

weaker forever and stronger for having overcome the pain

Not even cicadas know how to fly

I watch them crash into trees as 

I empty my tin bucket of painted shame

into the running water 

from its mouth trots out 

every mistake I’ve ever made 

and they salu! with little clay arms

and dunk their buttonheads under the water

the Physiognomist blows Os towards the ceiling

buttonheads are a sign of psychosis, he tells me

I can’t bear to sit and watch them swim around

so I head back home, full of wounds within and without