Some Mouth Feelings Keep Me Up at Night

I wonder if that old man on Speedway
            was actually smiling at me, or if
it was just a trick of the light. Maybe

                        I just caught something in the gears
            of his beard, like a coin in a toy slot
                        machine in front of a grocery store,

                                    or the bright blue twinkle of a baby’s eye
                                                dissected in the bushes, or something
                                    like the long-lost city of Atlantis

                        for gnats. If I had to guess, I would bet
            every cent of my lunch money
                        a beard like that holds a lot more

than just teeth. In the 9th grade,
            our homecoming queen rammed a girl’s
face into a toilet seat so hard she snapped

                        her braces. There was so much blood
            you couldn’t tell jagged porcelain
                        pieces from enamel scattered across

                                    the linoleum floor. Maybe it was
                                                something about her mouth, too,
                                    that makes me think, If I had a beard,

                        what would I keep in it? and I imagine
            cracking one open like a geode
                        and running a finger through ridges

of amethyst or quartz or citrine rock
            candy sharp enough to snag and shred
my tender skin. I know that having a beard

                        is to hold memories like mouthfuls of blood,
            that to taste it is to be stuck between spitting
                        and swallowing. I always spit, but I crave

                                    love notes plucked fresh from the trash
                                                like I would snatch slick cherry Chapstick
                                    and tiny wood pencils from my mother’s

                        purse just to plug up all the voids
            in my mouth, all those hemorrhaging
                        cavities, little ghost holes where rubber

bands and wires used to be. I feel
            my mouth could hold a whole world
full of men and homecoming queens

                        at the risk of bursting. If I had enough
            room inside me, I would even squeeze
                        that bloody, toothless girl in there

                                    and lay her down along my gums
                                                like a gauze hand across a heart
                                    or an overcast sky over a bald spot.

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