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Giles Goodland

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Elizabeth's Teeth

The tips of her front teeth used to
just point through where her lips
would separate, giving a view
of a slight jutting irregularity
unusual for an American of her class.
Maybe that’s why I fell for her.

Now she writes that her dad’s dead
and with the inheritance she’s
suffering braces for a couple of years.
They will kink out the buck, iron away
that goofiness, and the structure
of her face will straighten out.

Perhaps more beautiful, she’ll deliver
her considered words surely
more anonymously than when
she left me with a turn of the head
and the slit of a single incisor,
askew and overbitten, before
her lips came together
after there was no more to say.

But in the way that lovers remember
the rub of someone, I know enough
to recreate the pursing of the lips
before she spoke, the humorous
lifting of the upper lip so subtle
it was months before I noticed
how the teeth projected more

and when annoyed, the downturn
too slight to call a pout, just enough
to sheathe them. I explore this memory
as the tongue pushes into a raw gap,
knowing it will remain, like her letter
on my desk, undealt with.

 

Page(s) 31

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