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"An Ode to Dental Floss"

O dental floss,
you have been adopted,
co-opted,
by the spiked denim children of the streets.
Laced up in stomping boots,
you are their tendons,
keeping their limbs sewn together.

O dental floss,
you have survived the depths of drunken nights.
Sampsons hair to the punks of the pits,
beer and blood in every stitch,
and, as they always say:
A floss a day keeps the posers at bay.


"Do you like Radiohead?"

You stop.
Just for a second-
Breathless.
I ask you if you've ever been in love.
You say
No.
Maybe.
I don't know.
You turn
Eyes clear and open.
You ask
Have you?
Somewhere inside me
A bone bursts.
(Sternum. Maybe rib.)
I push my hand into my chest,
Dig,
Uproot tangled weeds,
Glowing fireflies.
My fingers pull out the wreckage,
Choking as they fall from my mouth,
Jagged white splinters.
We stare at them
Lying still on the pavement.
You pick one up -
No bigger than a toothpick
And slip it in your pocket.
My chest rattles,
Caves in,
Bone fragments swimming home.
I would love again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.


"The body of your daughter is now covered in hair"

Under a full moon
The werewolf rends his clothes,
Using blood rusted claws,
And howling teeth,
To strip off
Ill worn morning-skin
No longer fitting
On his animal body
(Wild and drooling,
What is always straining
Underneath).

Somewhere,
Beside bitter lamp light,
A mother cries
For a daughter nowhere to be found.
(And the next day
The mother will mourn
When her baby's clothes are found
In shreds).

But the werewolf doesn't care.
When he carves his letter in the dirt
It says

Dear mother,
The body of your eldest daughter
is now covered in hair.

And he never looks back.