laws of physics are nonsense when living lungs deflate at last. for if energy cannot be created or destroyed, are his old words of wisdom now heard in a newborns cry? the hysteria in her laughing eyes fueling an exploding star?

just ignore the heinous faces i make

this is gross

the season is apparent my face
with wind whipped cheeks i exhale
vapor flowing from my chapped lips
an idle jaw obsessed with gnawing
and ripping at dead skin and now
the taste of blood stains my mouth
so i dont need lipstick.

claudette's tiny mouth hung open weezing in rhythm with the sound of her extra-wide feet scuffling across the convenience store floor. she gathered five cans of liver and bacon kitty food for the little ones and a bag of little for multiple cats. unable to carry it in her pudgy hands, swollen and peeling from her seasonal exzcema, she unloaded onto the check-out counter.

"ethcuse me, do you carry cream of tomatuh sthoup?"

the clerk was picking at her fingernails. she took one moment away from this imperative bodily grooming to look up at claudette, who still had her mouth open, her eyes fixed on the clerk waiting impatiently for the response.

"um i don't know. like you can look."

claudette pivoted on her puffy foot and scooted back down the aisle. she scanned the meager canned food section. cream of chicken, tomatuh, beef. no luck. she was upset and could feel frustration building behind her eyes. she stopped and remembered what dr. brander had advised for when her anger kicked in.

one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten.

her heart rate slowed. she gathered her big body and queued with the rest of the happy people of her town.

snow has been falling incessantly for days,
and the people of my city
have been grunting and snorting
as they shovel on through
expressing their disapproval of glittering roads,
their wanderlust for the beaches of paradise.

perhaps you should forgive my simple mind,
inured by the cold and made dumb,
perhaps i should seek pity
for wanting to be nowhere else
but in this stained suede chair,
in this coffee shop, in this city i was born in.

your absence has gone through me,

like thread through a needle,

everything i do is stitched with its color.

W.S. Merwin

if i once traded a baby tooth for a dollar, then what's the going rate now for a twelve year old maxillary central incisor? a month's rent? the tooth lay dead on the dentist table and like the dying claim their whole life flashes before them, i was taken back to the birth, or more appropriately, the emergence of the bloody jagged pebble. it was a simple time when gangling little teeth fell into bowls of pudding and swollen gums were a common indication that new blunt lumpy things would soon appear. more than anything else, a school aged mouth resembled pink gums with rake tongs sloppily jutting out in all directions. some years later, a man with hairy nostrils would hover over me and exacerbate the mortification of adolescence by cemeting metal brackets to each tooth and wrapping them with lilac rubber bands. my abraded lips awkwardly streched out to form words but after three humiliating years, i was liberated. the metal was chipped off and the boy who would break my heart for the first time said i looked "prettier" in religion class as he put his hands in places where good catholic girls do not allow. my teen angst veneered my porcelain fence posts in fast food, bubble gum and cigarettes and as i grew in wisdom, the teeth shifted due to crack of dawn grinding and late night coffee talk. last week, i awoke stinking of jameson to a dry mouth and a throbbing socket where a tooth had once been. i went incognito to the dentist who shot me with novicaine and i drooled as he put the tooth out of its misery.