Are they really me?
Teeth are strange, whitish
rocks that can cause intense
pain, like an electric drill
boring hot into my head.
When a tooth goes nova
who can think? who can work?
Even the dentist’s root canal
is more welcome than what
burned my night to ashes.
My cats’ teeth are little daggers
but they never bite me, only
mice that come in from the woods.
Decades ago I was walking down
a Cambridge Mass street going
to see my lover when a dog
who guarded a dope dealer
got loose from his chain, leapt
at my throat. To this day, I bear
a German Shepard’s tooth marks
shiny and pale in my upper arm.
In a few thousand years, my bones
will dissolve but my teeth will remain
homo sapiens, yes, an archeologist
can extract my DNA, if desired.
• • •
By the tracks
In childhood till about age
twelve, four blocks away
along the railroad tracks
we enjoyed a wide swath
of land unbuilt, untamed.
Except for used condoms
it was natural, it was ours,
me and a couple of girl-
friends. Baby rabbits,
a stray cat or two, birds
whose names we never
knew, intense blue-eyed
chicory, milkweed whose
seedpods trailed silk
in fall we blew away.
We were free there from
housework, chores, home
work, supervision. Our
wilderness where freights
came and went. We waved
at the brakemen who threw
fat chalks we wrote with on
sidewalks, walls. It was
developed in cheap houses
and we never went back.
• • •
Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light (Knopf, September 30, 2020]; 17 novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; They also brought out short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc, and My Body, My Life [essays, poems]. She has read at over 500 venues in the U.S. and abroad. This is her fourth appearance in BoomerLitMag.