What The Mouth Tells
She said, You have scars in your mouth.
I guess the mouth goes through things
in the course of a life. The attempt to
emulate Chuck Smith and uncap a beer
bottle with your teeth; the lobster dinner
at Gerlinde’s cottage after six shots
of Courvoisier; the three day blow
via Wilson and an eight-ball cut
with powdered glass it felt like;
never mind the session with a lady
from the Red Zone who found
your lurid longing almost off-putting.
How bad is it? I asked Amy the hygienist,
who amiably declared I had nothing
to worry about except oral cancer.
I departed the clinic with a smile
less yellow than an hour before and my
thoughts adrift, recalling Chuck Smith
for instance, who married my cousin Maria
and is still kicking around albeit
with dentures; and I wondered
what ever happened to lovely Gerlinde
who my best friend Andy abandoned.
And what ever happened to Andy,
who split for the north without warning?
And Wilson is probably married with kids
and wearing a girdle and feeling
pretty good about how things turned
out for him, given everything.
And the lady from the Red Zone
back then already jaundiced
likely grew too cynical
to profitably ply her trade,
not unlike that john many years ago
who paid her in five dollar bills
for a taste of humiliation
and said that life, too, made him sick.
