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Veronica
You don't get to know someone's teeth overnight.
you've got to kiss that person
for a long time, often;
and look up close, intentionally
planning on remembering
just exactly how they look.
stumped yellow, angled out,
shaved and pointy,
even scarred like you'd forgotten
teeth could be.
And all teeth are perfect, Veronica.
Teeth are like water.
I don't grow tired
of teeth-click in mid-kiss,
or the taste of teeth,
which is the echo of the taste of mouth.
Teeth are the windows to the soul.
Teeth are what matter.
Look at my teeth, Veronica.
I've got the teeth of a lion.
Skin
1
Tyler had a pull-up bar wedged
between the sides of the door-frame
in the basement just inches
from the always hot, square iron stove.
We would leap the vast distance
between our out-stretched 10-year-old
arms and the bar and hold on.
We'd peer down from that great, grown-up
height and grin and scream and taunt
each other tired and blue. And once
the bar fell, with Tyler on it,
perhaps the wood, in cooling, shrunk,
we never knew. He hit hard,
on both knees, and seemed to bounce
right up, as high as the bar,
and let out a "MOM" that I was sure
moms everywhere could hear. Tyler
flew up the rough wooden stairs
and disappeared, left me alone
with the floor and the stove
and a feeling that I'd been spared,
and I couldn't help but think him a hero.
2
You start out just talking,
nagging, prodding,
and pretty soon you're burning
mad. That asshole fouls,
he hacks, no-control
punk kid. And then
you're there, face to
chest, he's a big punk kid,
de-escalating, diffusing, maybe
praying a little bit, but
nothing really happens, nobody's
ego is ruptured or even dented
too bad. You walk away, even say
"Good game, man"
and then you notice
that there's a brushstroke
of deep red rising in your thigh,
there's that strange basketball scratch
that doesn't bleed. Someone
raked you good as you left
the ground with everything
you had and the ball
and struggled through the air and the people
and your body and the rim got closer
and you left it there,
in the air that smells
like Indoor/Outdoor basketball skin
like our dirty rubber soles.
We came here to be beautiful
and sweat under the lights,
we leave slick-backed and we slap
each other and shake
each other's sticky hands,
walk away knowing we have all
come together and the work is done.
I take this home in a blood
mark on my arm, in a twich
in my walk, in the warm pull
and tug of pain.
A Living Room
The dust catches the light like a flock
of aimless moons at no particular distance
from the window or the couch or each other.
It's warm where the dog lies on the wood,
that's what the dog knows, and the dust
seems from an endless source. There's a mention
of the boxwood bushes, and their need for trimming,
they are pushing against the window and in the wind
the tender branches screech and the dog's
ears prick, but her head stays laid across her paws,
and the dust continues across the brief fields of light,
almost carrying the light, almost
amounting to something, like a couch,
like a warm dog. There is also the bookshelf,
the piano, black and out of tune,
the two glass tables, like two square eyeballs.
Matthew Kirsch received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona. He currently teaches eight-grade English in Charlottesville, Virginia.