he sells porcelain teeth
from a box
on the curb--
broken mirror, wafting
glue, the open
anxious mouth.
crouching, he brings
the new body
together. enter bicuspids
off-white, not the yolk
yellow of tea
& tobacco.
if the heart
falls out, are there vendors
with cardboard boxes
of plastic valves
moving already, impatient
for a new rhythm to beat
on the body instrument
like tongues
that keep swallowing
the life blood down
Crown
You fell down when we were getting water from the well. early spring, the mud was frozen in places, the bones of your feet cracked out rhythms. You sound so much older than you are when you walk, brittle-ankled boy, like you are stepping on acorns. I remember when we were children, you broke your arm in three places when you fell from the fence. You walked catlike and porcelain, moving your body as though your tail would follow. The neighbor boys threw rocks that missed you, mostly. thrice-broken arms with knobs in the bone from self-repair, where the calcium fused to itself. You showed me, holding my fingers to the spot on your forearm that is thick like old chewing gum, and told me our bodies are strongest where we have broken. Hair-thin boy, slight as an apology. You fell at the top of the hill, I ran after you, skinning my knee. Your forehead kissed out blood on the frost. You looked so irreversible.
THE AUTHOR
Erika Suni is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. A Pittsburgh
native, she now lives in New Orleans. Her work has appeared in
Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics.