1 | Wooden Teeth fall 2015 Volume , Number spring 2016
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staff submit Wooden Teeth is published twice each year and is open to all members of The George Washington University community. Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, alumni, and staff are encouraged to submit their poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art. For additional information, please refer questions to: Please send submissions and questions to:gwwoodenteeth@gmail.com
You may submit three literary works and three piecesof artwork each semester. George Washington University’s fannon
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Student Art & Literary Magazine sarah
mel sarahlilydanielataraannajasonsophiepiskaicorlessfreedbergfrenzelkosowskimorasavovickauffmanfannon
Love
spring 2016 Volume 39
leah edwards Locks
cover art: tara kosowski Candy, Hard marc devin hisarli kayla williams anya laurensamsaratarasangeetmelm.e.koneckimaypiskaimalhikosowskiannafenzelleahedwardscountsgabrielsimonannafenzelkaylawilliamssarahfannondanielowski 4241403432312928272624232120191615141110653 OnMotherThe Way To The Opera Holy Shi*t there are nights Art WakeExitTheS'moresCrowHymnLoveNailstoLoveQuietusBreakfastCottonAllMycenaeMyGreedyPeriodADAMuseumPieceGraffitiSkinisRevolutiontheBreakfastsinNovemberMouthsnote(fromthecoatrackyourparka)likePopchipsontheBeachLighterInterview poetry table of contentsgabrielsimonsarahfannontarakosowskijasonbentleylianasherman 373522177 Mami Takahashi, Fashion Designer Fish ParkingICygnetBowlAmEnabledLotParadigmproseart ashley llanes ashley michellemichellenorallanesalfaizritotatarakosowskiritotaleahedwardstarakosowskinoraalfaizashleyllanes 43363330251813942 The CoffeeFranciscaCastillo'sConversations in Blagden SkinAlley OnLipsBlossomDaydreamingBonesDeepShowersaLong-Forgotten Edge Veteren sangeet malhi leah laurenmarcsamsaraedwardscountspaigedavisleahedwardsdevinhisarlidanielowskisamsaracounts
ashley llanes The Castillo's 2 | Wooden Teeth
3 |
Frau Wallinger in third grade told us about history: about the Turkish threat to medieval Europe, the German parents who used to tell their broods that if they spilled their milk, or hit their sister, or took part in some other mischief, Turkish men would come and eat them. Then history, strangely absent until now, put its arms around us and squeezed, squeezed tight, shoving itself down the night of our throats, leaving the taste of iron, until the past fit into the present. Then the others looked at me, dark child, future devourer of children. That evening I crawled into your arms Scared to think that I might have changed come morning. Look for me, Mother, behind the white bars, among the zoo of novelties, where the visage of our people remains hidden, waiting to be revealed on a different day. I will be the Turkish boy wearing a suit and tie, feeding on everything but flesh.
Wooden Teeth marc devin hisarli Mother
When I was a boy, I knew I would not become a man, because you never taught me how to eat children. Now, it may be too late to learn.
Wooden Teeth | 4
ashley llanes Francisca
Wooden Teeth On the train I blow my nose on receipts; I have no tissues. Bagels, conditioner, tampons, wine, Idamp.tugon pearls, reapply lipstick, cross pantyhosed legs, read a new book, which, if I told you about it, would impress you. I’m going to the opera tonight. I call my mother and ask for more money, for toilet paper, Advil, tampons, but she asks me where mine went. I don’t tell her that I spent it on dress. I exit the train into the wind and I see everyone looking cold because that’s what they are but I’m sweating.
5 |
kayla williams On The Way To The Opera
I took your t-shirt out from The back of my drawer, Dismantled its shrine. I wore it to sleep, Now it’s in the laundry and it smells like me; No longer holy. No longer that scent that Meant good mornings and No coffee-but that’s okay cause I have the sound of your voice toThank god I have been cured of you. No longer untouchable, No longer wasted. No longer lazy. Now knowing more than days spent in static. This fabric has more purpose than Those words you can’t stop saying. You always loved the sound of your own voice. I am wearing out the creases, Wearing out the threads you left in my careDeemed as far too precious for far too long. I took your t-shirt out from the back of my drawer, Dismantled it’s shrine. It loves its new lifeNo longer under so much pressure to conform, It is loose enough to float around These hip bones, Brushing the Slight protrusions she loves.
Wooden Teeth | 6
TheRememberingwayyouused to hold them Frantically with trembling handsI like the new way so much better, So much more Sure of what is wanted, I am finally told I am wantedNot just whispers under sheets. Its out there in the streets. I didn't mean to rhyme, I just feel like I’ve been standing here so long and Biding my time is not how I want to spend This life.
anya konecki Holy Shi*t
I closed my eyes tight, trying to figure out the formula to what I saw and what I felt. The time passed and when I opened my eyes the sky was above me. Blues and whites. And when I looked down at my dress it seemed to be the same yellow as the daisies around my head.
I was 6 years old when I saw it floating above me horizontally across my eyeline. My dress was laid out on the grass and my head rested on a daisy patch. It was the color of the clouds and it moved like one.
That’s how it works for me. That’s the only way I know. Like a magic word. A ritual. The clothes design themselves. It started with a paper airplane.
Now I’m not so young. Now there are apartment complexes on that daisy hill in Japan.
Takahashi was already the name of something else anyways. We started in a small second story shop. It was only Jun and I and we were happy that way. I worked on designs at the big, oak table and she made the patterns. When we were hungry we ate pork buns and ramen from the downstairs market. I always thought she had the harder job. We should have called it Moto instead. I regret that.
She used to hang her patterns like tree limbs around the shop. You would walk in and have to wade through her plans of the future to get to where you were going. You’d brush against them and feel like they were whispering secrets. Around the studio Jun always wore her uniform: solid color sweaters with a large apron over them.
You have to touch the fabric with the very tips of your fingers. It’s the only way to hear what they’re trying to say. You can hear it through the digits. Each one unique, a specific vibration. You close your eyes and listen. You guide your fingers across them until it makes sense.
7 | Wooden Teeth
I wonder if clothes wish they could get rid of their names. I wish I could get rid of mine. Strike Mami Takahashi from all the records. Phantom limbs would design things instead. It would be better that way.
I’d ask her why she hung them up like that and she’d answer, “Even patterns need room to stretch.”
gabriel simon Mami Takahashi, Fashion Designer
I never found the paper airplane or the airplane maker.
Someone asked me once if, after three decades, I had designed the perfect dress. Or, as they phrased it, “the one of your dreams.”Ipursed a cigarette in my lips and struggled for an answer. Then, after a while, I answered, “No. So it must still be out there waiting for me to find it.” It wasn’t my idea to name my clothes after myself. If clothes have someone else’s name then how do they grow up? They have a life of their own and need their own names. Our marketing department decided the clothing line would be called Taka hashi, but no tag with the name would be on them. Only a small cloud stitched into the bottom left of each piece. It seemed a much better name than mine.
Something like a chemical reaction occurred in me at that moment. The way it moved, you could see the creases and folds playing against the sunlight. I wanted to touch it. To feel the lines someone else had made with their own hands. But it was up there and I was down here. So instead I grasped at what I could, at my dress as I watched the plane dance in the air. And I felt that the wrinkles in my dress were somehow connected to that paper airplane. Different, but one and the same. Some kind of bridge connected them at that moment and I felt that I could walk across it. I drew a line across a blue sky. And the whole time I held the fabric in my hands, until it floated left out of sight.
Wooden Teeth | 8
When we started to expand internationally things changed. We became a chain, with everything that the word means. Linked, locked up. There are too many restrictions and I’m afraid of being lost in the shuffle. Takahashi took my name and kept it for itself.
He looked at me with a strange face. His bushy brows did a little dance. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about fash ion.” He took a bite of his pasta, then said, “But I know that it’s never been enough for you. Even back then you sent each piece off thinking there was always something more that you could do. ” His voice was quiet, but sure of itself. He trailed off, pondering. Then he said, “You end up trying to make up for everything you’re not with each stitch. But it doesn’t make you anything. It’s only clothing.” After we finished, I thanked him for dinner. We made the same promises we always did to not wait so long to see each other again.As I walked home through the gardens it started to rain and the people started to scatter. But I walked slow and let it pour down on me. When I got home my clothes smelled like wet daisies. Like lost afternoons.
When you finally have your product, you start to figure out how to present it. You roll out concepts for the image, the ad, the tone of the line. You become the curator. Because you have to tell a story in the tactile. The story is to be worn, told in the stitches and by the lives lead.
The other day I walked through the gardens in Chiba Prefecture with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. We were catching up as children ran and smelled lilacs and some were crying. It was spring and the irises were in full bloom. We spoke about our time in Tokyo in the 70’s, about the late nights we’d spent wandering and singing and searching for food. He reminded me of when I dyed my hair blond. It was a forced look, I remembered. We made our way to his place and he cooked penne pasta with a side of split peas. His apartment simmered. He asked me, “What are you working on?” I replied, “A sweater...” I showed him the mock ups. “It’s the type of sweater that drapes down hanging low from your hips like sleeping bats.” He replied, “I like it. It’s simple. Or maybe it flirts with the edges of simplicity.”
I said, “But isn’t it missing something? Don’t you think that there’s something that’s hiding, that it’s not willing to say?”
I don’t know if I’ll ever find my dream dress now. I don’t know even know if these clothes ever really belonged to me. Jun passed away and now cheap labor makes our patterns. I’ve spent too much of my life at this big, oak table. Trying to listen to fabrics. There are too many and it’s always too loud for me to hear anything. I always look at what I’ve come up with, put the pencil down, and wonder, “How did I end up with this?”
Designing clothes is like living through the seasons. You retreat inside yourself, you isolate. It’s difficult to explain, but you have to close yourself up until you’re able to see in the dark. It’s not that the shapes appear from thin air. You just keep walking closer, step by step, until the image is imprinted in your memory. Until you can hold it in between your hands and walk out of the dark. Jun used to say it was like, “Desperately trying to remember something you forgot.”
Once you have that you start to bring people in. I know I have a reputation as a tyrant of design. I demand a lot out from the people I work with. But my job isn’t to dictate. It’s to communicate. To take the image and make them understand it in the words that are essential. We all need to understand the thing we’re working for. And if something is wrong then it’s my fault, my failure to put it into words.
9 | Wooden Teeth nora alfaiz Coffee Conversations in Blagden Alley
m.e. may there are nights
Wooden Teeth | 10
something beyond writing beyond acknowledging beyond being awake and being one voice in a thousand that says, “Yes, I see, I am aware” beyond reaching for a hand in the dark and speaking sweet nothings I am still so desperately trying to believe am I going to be shot for it too? am I one of Carlin’s darlings waiting for the crosshairs to find that sweet spot between my shoulder blades and to finally prove right all the years I’ve spent spooking at shadows, scared of strangers? when I find myself on solid soil again I will find you and I will press my chapped lips to yours and we can shake together I will reach for you in the only way I know how and mingling with salt of sweat and exhausted tears you will taste the whispered words on my tongue as my bitten fingertips trace your cheek “Help me, please, I’ve forgotten how to find my way home.” there are nights when I shake and chew on my fingertips and I have to ask, “is the world still a good place?” when I was younger it was a giant sandbox infinite possibilities stretched ahead of me while infinite stories sat behind twiddling their thumbs patiently waiting to be dusted off with the dinosaur bones on nights like tonight when I am sober and shaking I start to wonder if there are any good people left on this blue-grey-green rock and if so are they as disenchanted with the world as I am? is it unfair of me to find solace in a tendril of smoke or the sickly-sour taste of chemicals on my tongue? or is there something more I could be doing?
Painted face, awkward I am always the last one laughing
Looking over a plunging gorge She is Grand Canyon She is gorgeous She is painting I am circus clown
And the joke's on me You said you wish You knew how to paint So you could paint her With nimble skinny fingers
When I walk into the room
mel piskai Art Museum
Feeling guilty for somehow everything I am broken window
11 |
It is an apology letter I’ve stopping looking in mirrors So I don’t have to spend the rest of the day
NimbleSwoopingskinny bodies White and pale Like we’re all taught to be You might've forgotten I was the old napkin doodle in your pocket You took me out to wipe coffee from your sleeve
Wooden Teeth
She is dancer He is dancer I am manic windmill I am broken television I am sock lost behind desks under too much dust I am dust
Wooden Teeth | 12
I am full of holes My edges crumble Can not even be used for skipping Only forgetting The least you could do is leave me And not leave me
Replacing food with broken glass I wonder daily How I am not enough My giant body Is elephant in the room made out of egg shell And she Is fragile waterfall You cannot stop her stream Makes everything she touches glisten When you fell for her Your body was stardust
I am broken battlefield I am broken soldier I am losing a war I’ve never wanted to fight That was waged on my broken body I am a prisoner, no ransom My shark tooth stone wants to bite But can only crumble Don’t you see You have locked me in an art museum And you’ve painted over everything With her face
I am a sharktooth chunk of cooling stone
Writing this poem Is pulling shrapnel From my lumpy body
I am rocks at the bottom I am suicide jumpers wedding rings I am dark I’ve never know what it was like to be smooth
I am not the flower
13 | Wooden Teeth michelle ritota Skin Deep
Wooden Teeth | 14 sangeet malhi ADA YouAda are in a womb, Swimming and kicking, Eager to swing in the arms Of your father. At sixteen weeks, The skin is translucent, Eyelids shut, And gender unwanted. There are reasons Too complex to comprehend
While swimming With closed eyes. I shall change the stale waters And let you float In the ocean of Equal preferences. I shall write you Melodies of fish, Dances of peahens, Or a song Of revolutionary measure And ask your mother to sing.
And as I pressed my hands against your Rorschach sheets I tried to read our future in the patterns. But I’ve always been bad at puzzles and our story started to puddle with a little cold water and soap.
I’m sorry that you’re afraid of blood like I’m afraid of waiting rooms and small spaces, but maybe I like when my tide is high; maybe I like to ride it out, past the buoys, just to catch some salt in my hair.
15 | Wooden Teeth tara kosowski Period Piece I bleached your sheets this morning to erase the all of me from all of you. It’s like kneading out the stains of my white collared shirts, speckled with chocolate milk and mud, except I’m not in Catholic school anymore and I don’t wear much white these days.
Wooden Teeth | 16 Me, standing here in front of you, unsure of what to do. You, a great cement canvas filled with words and blurbs and faces and curses, in wildflower violet and nightsky blue, so filled with tags the only clue to your being synthetic rock is the ashy scrape on my arm from leaning into you. Your words and pictures layer one atop the next, each one trying to outdo the work of those from however long ago still there, cave art, hidden somewhere underneath the sooner ago’s paint. Some of it is beautiful. Out of an unspoken respect for beauty, no one sprayed over those bits but for the very edges – a miscalculation of space, probably. This was to be my debut, I had brought an aerosol can of black ink - black because it's classic, black because it’s cool, black because it was ninety-nine cents cheaper than the fun can of gold paint. And you know that I’m not doing this for some coup or revolution, to spread meaning or to change world view, but because of me, to feel cool and classic just like black paint. anna fenzel Greedy Graffiti
The evening he left, she woke up in the middle of the night craving an omelet, but it wasn’t until she had dragged herself out of bed and was standing in the refrigerator glow that she remembered there were no eggs in the house.
17 | Wooden Teeth sarah fannon Fish Bowl
He broke up with her in the grocery store parking lot. She dropped the egg carton and the eggs cracked, spilling like white koi on the asphalt. She had almost seen it coming in peripheral glances and conversations that slipped into coffee and newsprint. But to look it in the eye would be to accept it. So she bought a guppy and named it Bonnie, hoping to reel back some of his commitment. He had once told her he loved marine life because fish were much less complicated than humans. Bonnie died a few weeks later, and he flushed her down the toilet. He told her the fish bowl should be packed away instead of left bare and drained atop their ivory-fingered piano. He had no intentions of getting another fish; that should have been her first clue. Now she liked to keep the fish bowl empty.
Wooden Teeth | 18 tara kosowski Bones
If she would stop thinking of herself as inferior, like apple-cider vinegar.
My skin was tired of suffering in the heat, she wanted to breathe because the pale complexions were blinding her, while reminding herself her caramel coating was only a tan to aspire for, in the summer for them. A trendy statement, for them. And she wasn’t dark enough for the darker complexions, to fight for equal representation of her color.
leah edwards My Skin is Revolution
So I told my skin, I would write for her if she would stop thinking of herself as “other” to be fixed and folded into a box and checked.
19 | Wooden Teeth
My skin wanted me to write this poem about itself It was tired of being called “exotic” and that’s it. Tired of my hair stealing all the attention— the braid lining my back like I was some striped creature who existed between fur-coated tall white men.
I told my skin, “Don’t you know you are like the gold that lines the Egyptians’ portrayals of gods and their pyramids?” You are home, for kings. And not many people are welcoming of “home” when they feel so far away. That you are the honey to the milk that relaxes our troubled youth to sleep and coats the mouths of sore throats. You remind races that your mix is evidence of forgiveness, of love. Two people at a time.
But her mix, the love she stands for drawn from the suffering she feels when she wishes she was one or the other and not in-between is evidence she and it can exist and we must make room for it. My skin is revolution.
samsara counts Mycenae
Wooden Teeth | 20 From the entrance gate, twin lions greeted us with blank stares as we passed, frenetic as sunlight seared our skin and the ground burned our feet. We raced to sanctuary: a passage, tall as Atlas, a monument swallowed by the earth, a beacon of shade. In that shadow: the ancient stone of a tholos and me, no visible limit or capstone to break my chest, heaving, drawing in cool air, the caress of its damp palms resting on my cheek. Leaning back, I gathered my hair, exposing my neck, letting its heat radiate into the shadows. Here we reclaimed our pursuit of the enduring: of each morning a reflection on a past, solid as the walls around us, evenings uncertain but prepared for. You were so much more whole back then, living had not abraded the soul now entombed within you. The ancients encompassed you then and remain with you now, amused as you scratch at their immovable walls, desperate to reveal crumbling ruin, finding only stone. You will always find only stone. The bricks, woven together, circle in, protecting the empty tomb long beyond our days to end.
While you break beets/over break-beats/ that just circle/around our heads/like tiny annihilations, I think I see/the vampires spread/ their wings outside/their sweaters. There’s 1 egg left/and I’m like “Dang, dude.”
Yeah, just like when/ you thought you could/just bust up/ the corners/of the moon with/ your little affections.
21 |
gabriel
Wooden Teeth
I still like learning all those bad words/and bad verbs, I still like talking to my/self.
Take time to reach/into your memory glue. What doesn’t stick/will not come back/to you.
I wish the plates would stack up/into the heavens/ so I could climb up/with no hands / and Elbow Drop the stars and silence. Take time to reach/into your memory glue. What doesn’t stick/will not come back/to you. Except the things on my desk/ and the gum on my shoes.
Dedicated to Marceline, the Vampire Queen simon All the Breakfasts in November
And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
- W.B.Yeats, Leda and the Swan
“Helen,” she had said. “I need you to be still, my love, and listen to Mommy. Now, I’ll only say this once: put your hand over your heart. Just like that, darling. Memorize its song, how it beats with such fierceness underneath your palm. It is your biggestThetreasure.”girl’sface had lit up with the image of a heart of gems, and her right hand moved over the left, as if she knew what her mother was about to say. “Now, you must protect that kindness. Don’t let anyone take it away. They will try to steal it from you; they will try to trick and cheat you out of it. But a clever woman can never be defeated. But instead let your strength protect your softness. You are Helen of Sparta, and no one can take that from you.”
Helen couldn’t be saved. Where there should be bone, there was only honey. And where there should be spine, only sweet ness.Now she stood back and waited for her daughter to fall. To pick herself up. Like all great women learn to do.
She had looked into her daughter’s blue-grey eyes for recognition, but Helen just stared at her hands and replied, “Okay, mommy. Can we go to the park now?”
Wooden Teeth | 22 Leda felt her daughter brush past her knees, and she watched as Helen bounded towards the edge of the Pond. The girl was a cloud of blond hair, all sugar and no substance. Leda always feared, though she couldn’t explain quite how, that Helen was perpetually on the verge of slipping away. Like trying to hold water in your palms and watching it fall through the notches in your fingers. Already ten, yet she moved with an unconscious grace that commanded one’s attention. That kind of beauty was dangerous, Leda knew.
She had hoped that the move to New York would offer her family a sense of ambiguity within its mechanical heartbeat. She had bought a little apartment in Brooklyn – the real Brooklyn of the Domino sugar factory and rubble, not the posh brownstones and community gardens that emerged with new urgency each day. She had hoped the city would weigh down her daughter’s steps; square her little, bird-like shoulders, the shoulders of her father. When a year had passed and Leda’s little cygnet still could not be hardened, she sat her daughter down at their kitchen table.
She watched as Helen danced and shimmied near the water’s edge, admiring the reflection of her own glow. People had started to notice the girl – this little ball of light in Central Park – and her movements echoed their attention. Helen pranced closer to the water’s edge, lost in admiration, letting the water just lick the soles of her new sandals. When it looked as if Helen would fall into the murky pool, she would hop away with a cool grace, only to begin her dance again. Leda’s heart twisted as the girl edged closer to the water with every murmur from the growing crowd.
The girl was doomed. Leda couldn’t blame her for it, couldn’t blame herself either, said she’d never blame herself.
All the swans were watching as Helen dipped too closely to the water’s edge and her big, princess eyes widened with the missed step and she toppled, a wisp of light, into the dark stretches of the Pond.
tara kosowski Cygnet
How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
23 | Wooden Teeth anna fenzel Cotton Mouths
When I was a little bit too old, and it was hot and sweaty, the weather must have melted into our minds because we were so thirsty. I didn’t want you, I wanted water but you were the cup I could drink from, and when you said “want to go for a walk?” you smelled like pack but I tasted like gin so I said sure, and I smiled. Your rusty skin matched the tobacco you rolled. Your voice, coarse and chemical, and you had a snake inked to your chest –my mother would have disapproved. You were on the prowl and I guess I was there for your hunger, too.
Wooden Teeth | 24
kayla williams Breakfast
I’d probably forget to stir the sugar and the last sip would be too sweet.
I wonder what it would feel like to drink coffee at your creaky table, maybe with eggs or toast.
25 | Wooden Teeth michelle ritota Daydreaming
Death paints her nails deep carmine, blows lightly on them, waiting. A woman, more bruise than skin, dies on a carpeted living room floor as the sun is spilling like tangerines on a countertop. Death appears, cradles the woman like a limp bird, and carries her back to her condo.
Death fills a mug with boiling water, drops a teabag in it, humming to herself. She tells the woman to be careful, the tea could burn her lips. The woman says she wouldn’t mind if Death tripped her husband into traffic. Death smiles sadly, says that’s not how it works. The woman just sips her tea. Death has a garden in her backyard, clusters of poached eggs and baby’s breath. She insists everyone look at it before she leads them away.
Wooden Teeth | 26
sarah fannon Quietus
27 |
Love note (from the coat rack to your parka)
lauren danielowski
Without you, I just collect dust And wait for someone new.
As you fall in slow motion to the floor. I have to watch you lie there all night, Crumpled underneath me, catching specks of dirt And cat hairs that stick to the ground. With me, you are always clean.
At least when you are on the floor like that, I can be near you. It is so lonely when you spread yourself over the arm of the couch Instead of being with me. You look tranquil there, your quilted brown fabric Barely distinguishable from the mahogany leather. Why can’t you be that way with me?
And you dry off on the rubber mat beneath us, You dripping, me getting to hold you. It is my favorite time of day. But sometimes you slip out of my reach, Your tan furs slowly bristling against my oak exterior
Wooden Teeth Nighttime is my favorite time of day. You breeze through the door, sometimes dripping with melted snow drops, Other times so dry you make a scratching noise as you graze the edge of the door, But either way you are home. Most days I catch your fur lined hood securely on my stand
A weapon in your hands. The hot tong and my cold skin. You wait again for me to look down. The moon in your plate, torn and flat, Perhapsfrozen. you are plural.
You dig the nails of your fingers into my upper arm and wait for my eyes to lookingstop into your eyes
sangeet malhi Nails
Wooden Teeth | 28
A summation of others like you. An enormous you and my stare pecks at that whichmultitudeyoubelieve is bigger than IGod.don’t Everythinganymore.cookhere is a weapon and a mustkitchennot feed the plurality and biggerarmthatAfterunfairness.allthenailsdigintoasingleshouldn’tbethanGod.
“Howdirectly.dare you call me a singular ‘you’?” you yell. I want to answer but could not. Such is the depth at which your nails Ahurt.roti swells with steam and I serve you a moon held in a tong. I tell peopleyoucall their Gods the singular ‘You’ and He remains as respectable.
When I ask if she can spare a tittynope of her love for this hopeless sailor, because I want to swim in her sea of love and take showers in her flowers. And I don’t care if that makes sense or not Because at least it sounds better than that baby talk. Can I call you mamma? And can you hold my hand like I need it? Can she love me when my brown thighs aren’t the stereotypical image of beauty that the industry is portraying That I’m not a fan of female exploitation But this body is an act of revolution.
29 | Wooden Teeth Can she love me if I told her my love is like Popchips?
Like it’s a little greasy on the outside but once you get into it it tastes really good but you still have to break ground to really enjoy it and the flavor’s not for everyone. Will she love me if I told her I make quirky analogies like that on a daily? And fuck it, I don’t want to know how your day is I just want to make it. I want to make up. Make love. Make war. Yes, with all the lies that say my love is not strong enough to love you. Make love bombs and love louder than bombs. Be the reason for the tears of joy smearing your make up When I say this poem is for you.
Love like Popchips
leah edwards
A break from the conservative expectations of my family of my faith— Female exploit. I will be your Superman And we can peep Aladdin’s magic carpet ride as long as you promise me a sip of your wine because you’re like Chardonnay on fire and I’ve got wood. Can she love this Girl on Fire? Call me handsome. Call me queer. Call me magically delicious. For my love, not for my loving. What were you thinking? Send me to Jupiter to get more stupider, so your love can feel like Lucky Charms I just want our love to be noticed. I want to stare into space, holding your hand, thinking out loud, Thinking, “What the fuck are Popchips?”
Wooden Teeth | 30 leah edwards Blossom Showers
31 | Wooden Teeth
Here, in memory of your existence, I follow the noise: shuffling hymns as the congregation begins. The awe of hundreds, your rove: rescinding the only world you knew for the violet hum, nothing, shutting us out for the last time. I open a book, sing, and assume the motions of uplifting. Only the harmony of your memory follows. Here in the noise, I exist in filling air with songs that cannot tell of a man once living in sorrow. In the end, the pain you bore alone, drove you to rescind it: the only world you knew. For our hum, nothing so many voices can redeem. So I string syllables together, words stumbling from my lips, a semblance of enough. Your voice, the music you loved— the noises of you—exist here: in my memory. Following the waste of your life, we proclaim: we’ll be seeing you again in life eternal. But no spirit descends upon you like a dove. You rescinded the world you knew for only the violet hum. Nothing. Today, we cede to solemn liturgy. But we used to gasp for laughing so hard at your jokes on the horror of this life. You continue (as you strove to) in our memory, following us here, above the noise. You exist only in you, rescinded; me, in the world you knew, part of the hum, nothing.
samsara counts Hymn
Where white ribbons whip sand to crush against my legs; The smooth grit stings the paper skin encircling my ankles And reddens my joints like tightened fingers. There, beside my cloud-rinsed feet, That dried up in the rain And drown in the sunlight, One scorched feather among the fragmented shells and stunted pebbles, The ancient ammunition from a grey war Lies like a glaring tombstone: Somebody lived here once. And I turn away from the ocean As the vitrified dust drips into my ears And crunches between the glassy enamel of my teeth Before seditiously sinking down my throat.
Wooden Teeth | 32 paige davis Crow on the Beach
Because I know that when I think of you A nameless bird clatters its cage somewhere in my chest And cracks my ribs like knuckles, Broken up into a sickening cemetery Of useless thoughts and wasted phases Spent looking up, “DoWondering,weever breathe at the same time?”
And I wonder
Because the bubbling air forcing its way between my lips Spreads wide the strings in this starless feather Come now, come now There was a Murder here.
There is a crow on the beach
“Was the air in your lungs the breath between my teeth and tongue and lips?”
33 | Wooden Teeth tara kosowski Lips
You are chocolate Put it on me Stickiness,S’mores hotness. The type of sensation Your shoe feels when it kisses that sticky piece of pink gum spat on the sidewalk on hot concrete. Sweaty feet type of nervous Take off your loafers and your clothes and dive into the deep end. It’s too hot Skinny dipping Skinny It’sSummerlovelove.gettinghot in here Melt with me
I am honey graham cracker
Wooden Teeth | 34
leah edwards S'mores
jason bentley I Am Enabled
The door opened and there was Terry, he had rolled and rolled and rolled to Future, but that was three hours ago. Just like Mo, me thought. We didn’t normally feel like Terry, we usually felt like Matt and his unnamed friend. They were like this nine hours ago (three times three). Me had made them feel this way and through my observances and through my empathy me felt everything they could feel. It felt like blurry jig-saw puzzles with curved edges- running my tongue over the smooth slants. It felt like too much light post too much dark, slurring their edges and details for something more pure. It felt like bugs spinning on my legs at the base of each hair, like they were seaweed flowing with a tide. It felt like me was a tide pool, me was bursting and birthing with life- run my hands though my sands and snag the stifled slugs and snails leaching life from my skin. It felt like a barrier engulfing me in a just too cold chill while the world around me rains with great and terrible ferocity, but we’re in this sneaking blanket, speaking dissociative claims and outrageous veins coursing with what we could only assume was purple blood. Our veins never felt so good. Then there were three of us shoulder to shoulder. There was me, Mo, Alex, and me. Vibrations changed and stuttered forward with lyrical beats. Mo kept slowly falling into a cavern, inching closer and closer to a warm darkness. Me and Alex let him seep and grow his roots into the floor under his feet, rummaging through black and white tiles for substance only to find barren wood left years before. And then Alex had to leave because others wanted some of his, and he had so much to give so it was ok. So me stood in front of the mirror with me, we stared at each other’s eyes which now stank of red. Boom boom boom the vibrations echoed up from my gut which ached for satisfaction, it was addicted to its cravings, the junkie. Me closed our eyes because we didn’t need to see in front of our faces because we knew what it looked like. In my abstrac tions behind thin skin I see the sensations swaying in my hips and I can’t breathe deep enough for how much we want but we will sure as hell try. Me wants to feel good, me needs to, needs to feel every microscopic bit feel this good.
35 | Wooden Teeth There was me, Mo, Alex, Matt, Michael, and me. We were shoulder to shoulder. It was his turn, then his, then his then his then me. And me took a long, slow turn. Me was observant we stared back at one another in the bathroom mirror. There was exhaustion tucked under our eyes, physical only in purples and blacks and dark blues. Matt had yellows in his mouth, and Alex was infatuated, obsessed with green. He doted upon it, inhaled virescent dreams which screamed at purpose which they did not mean. He was humble with it, thankful to clean its essence from the obscene thing. Michael and me never cleaned. Then Alex was gone. Me hadn’t noticed he’d left. There was just the vibrations from the sound which felt good in our stomachs and at the ends of the little standing hairs; felt good to the crests of our bones, in the back of our eyes, the tops of our ears, the bottom of our throats. Me closed our eyes and we could see the feeling of the vibrations, reverberating back and forth against the mirror- like a pulsating reflection across that lake upstate, whatever it was called. Me wanted to go back to that lake at that very moment, full knowing how much was at stake and full knowing how little of it me could fake. Me could still fake better than Mo. Mo was off in the eyes since three hours ago when he took that little green bar. Matt and Alex had tried a white one and a yellow one and those were fine and so the green one was left and Mo is a hard worker (not as hard as his lungs). There’s a film over his humanity now, a glossy separation between an underwhelming reality and a stigmatized understanding. Me stared at foggy eyes. Mo was more primal than before. Mo felt more than a reality could offer, making him more of a human and less of one at the same time. Mo laughed but we couldn’t remember what had happened that was funny so we laughed with him because me liked the nostalgia of his laugh.
Wooden Teeth | 36 nora alfaiz On a Long-Forgotten Edge
The sun was smoldering and I felt the sweat cake across my body as I took those dreaded steps through the parking lot towards the clinic. I could not speak, as I was overcome by the bitter taste of lost hope. It did not help that outside the building a small crowd of people stood, waving ‘pro-life’ signs and chanting antagonizing phrases on how I was about to commit murder. Their faces were twisted. Frightening. That’s often the case for people morphed by a warped sense of humanity, I thought as I pictured the screaming swarms of people on Kristallnacht Grandma Anastazja had once described. The presence of a group mentality is an incredible thing to behold. They claim they speak of humanity, yet where was theirs? Such people never speak, but roar. Killer, Murderer? There was no other option, I wanted to yell out. Frantically grasping Rob’s hand, I tried my hardest to feel courage and actually make it inside. His clammy palm did not help. Yes, I had wanted a child. We had wanted a child. I was thirty-eight after all, getting more anxious as each miscarriage birthed shame and disappointment. Rob and I had tried for years. Fourteen to be exact. We were halfway through the adoption process when I suddenly discovered I was several weeks pregnant. You could not begin to grasp the joy that we felt. Now, three months later, that joy was sorrow. If we kept the child, I would not survive. For two weeks I had refused to believe the doctors. A ‘justifiable abortion’? It had been too distressing for me to even consider willingly giving up my chance at motherhood. That refusal had held, that is, until earlier this morning. A hor rid rush of pain had spread throughout my lower abdomen, causing me to drop to the floor in a state of pure agony. The loss of consciousness, that intense throbbing. And then there was the blood. My choices were abortion, complete removal of the uterus, or death. Frozen there, splayed across that checkered tile was when I knew, when my heart finally understood that this child was no longer mine. We reached the sidewalk, and yet rather than looking towards the clinic, my eyes fixated on one individual in the crowd of rioters. A young boy, sitting with his legs crossed. He looked no older than twelve, a handsome youngster with thick dark hair and blue eyes. My vision clouded as I imagined what my own child would have looked like. Perhaps with my dark hair, Rob’s blue eyes. It would have been a boy. His mom yanked him up, thrusting a sign into his small hand. The red square read ‘Face It—Abortion Kills’. I couldn’t help but let out a weary laugh. If only they truly knew. My abortion was intended to save a life. My life. Glancing up at Rob, I realized just how precious that life was to me. He was my family. The automatic door opened, and we got nearer. For the first time that day, I straightened my back and walked with a sense of purpose rather than defeat. An ending was about to begin.
37 | Wooden Teeth liana sherman Parking Lot Paradigm Beth
It wasn’t as if this was something I had intentionally planned, I thought grimly to myself. Then again, who gets pregnant with the intent of having an abortion?
She was always doing this, forever yelling with the others at strangers. Usually the girls just passed by, avoiding eye contact or looking down as they walked. Sometimes one yelled back. Garrett wanted to know what it would be like, being one against the many. Only once did he see someone fight back with their fists. Eddie Jenkins got a black eye and broken nose from the fight. But then again, Eddie Jenkins was a jerk.
“Louder, Garrett, louder! Don’t act like an idiot,” Ma kept screeching earlier. The second girl of the day was making her way past their group. He mouthed the words and turned his back to Ma. That was the first time Garrett didn’t do what she had ordered. He didn’t see why they yelled when the girls always seemed to go in anyway.
Ma said they had to protest ‘cause what the girls do was too cruel. Killing babies? It always seemed like a fib to him. But so many people said it was true. Even Preacher Robertson. Every rally Ma dragged him to, each march against the ‘baby slashers’, they met so many people that were angry about the use of ‘methotrexate and misoprostol’ and ‘dilation and curettage’. Whatever those meant, Garrett guessed people didn’t like it when it happened to babies.
That day only a couple of people had walked past into the clinic, mostly teenage girls. Some came with people, some walked alone. He liked to look at their faces, the way they walked, their reactions to the chants and signs. To Garrett, watching each girl’s walk from the parking lot to the doors of the building was like reading a story about herself.
pooped after standing in the same place without shade for four hours, he sat down to that boiling sidewalk and began to count the lines on his right hand. In his mind, he thought he’d probably count them all before Ma would decide they’d had enough and go home.
As she stood a man ran around the side of the car. His skin was as dark as hers was light, his body as tall as hers was short. They were complete opposites, and yet somehow it seemed right to see them together. They began to walk, and he could see the woman was in a lot of pain, beginning each step in a slow and calculated move. The man was helping her with his hand on the small of her back, gently guiding her towards the clinic. For the first few seconds, there was blessed silence. And then the others saw them.
“Every child is a wanted child!” “Lord forgive us and our nation!” “Abortion kills children!” “You are a cold-hearted murderer!”
Wooden Teeth | 38 Garrett It’s way too hot to be outside, Garrett thought to himself. Then again, when did weather ever stop Ma from protest ing?Too
Unexpectedly, Garrett heard the clicking sound of a car locking nearby in the lot. Looking up from the lines of his right hand, the number he had reached in his head disappeared. He couldn’t look away. A woman appeared, her belly rounded with a baby bump. She was beautiful. Not in the way the younger girls sometimes are, but the way he would picture an angel to look like. Like the angels in church. Her hair was long and dark, like small ocean waves rolling down her back. She had pale skin, like the milk you pour over a bowl of Cheerios. And yet, it was her face that had him staring. It seemed clouded with something more than shame, deeper than embarrassment. There was a sadness that surrounded her, a blend of pain and bitterness that the teens never seemed to carry. It was toxic beauty.
waved it half-heartedly, looking back to the couple. The woman was no longer looking at him, and Garrett felt something he had never felt before. It was a weird sort of disappointment. Was she really a murderer? How could someone that looked like an angel kill babies? It didn’t look like she was happy about it, he thought. She had watched him with such gentleness. Garrett began to picture what life would be like if he just dropped the sign and ran to her. Maybe they’d go to the beach every weekend and play soccer on the sand. Or they’d drive to the forest and camp out and fish from a real river. What if he had a Dad that taught him baseball? Garrett closed his eyes and imagined it all. He Whatsmiled.ifevery day someone looked at him with such compassion, such care? His hand lowered. Ma grabbed Garrett’s shoulder roughly, telling him to wave the sign higher. He couldn’t help but feel sad. Wasn’t his life worthy of care? Garrett imagined the start of a new life, a life with a Ma who didn’t force him to shout mean things at strangers carrying obvious pain. The couple reached the entrance, and the automatic door slid open. A start was about to end.
The voices rose like a feather that got caught up in a gust of wind. Ma really got into it, spit soaring from her mouth as she shouted the words. All together, the crowd sounded powerful, harmonious, righteous. Garrett would have joined in like Ma always told him to if not for the expression on the woman’s face. As soon as they began to shout, she looked over. The woman’s hand reached around her back, weaving her fingers into his. Her eyes were on Ma, and Garrett wanted to get up and tell Ma to stop yelling. Then those eyes caught Garrett’s, and his breath stopped. Her eyes were filled with longing, sorrow.While looking at Garrett, she raised her hand above her rounded belly. Her left hand hovered for a second, a caress in the making. But right before she made contact with her belly, the arm went limp and fell to her side. Rather than feel anger at her like the others, Garrett felt ashamed of himself. She kept her eyes on him, and Garrett thought he would have stared back at her forever if not for Ma grabbing his forearm and jerking him up to his feet. The act made the black bruise she had caused earlier that week flare up in protest. Her sweaty hand left a stinging sensation, then returned to shove a sign into his hand. Glancing at the sign, he saw ‘Face It—Abortion Kills’ in bright red. “What the hell are you waiting for? Wave it!” she ordered, bits of spittle flying off her tongue that reminded Garrett of tiny shooting Hesitantly,stars.Garrett
39 | Wooden Teeth
Of the Zippo Squad only the deserted trench art at the base remains: If you want to fuck, smile when this lighter you hand back.
The brass bottom case sits cold and coarse Until skin rubs on steel, sends it to a whirl.
John V. Luckey: a ten-year old found your lighter among the ruddy plains of Ia Drang Valley. He swings it open, and shut; fascinated by the star in his hand, there and gone again. devin hisarli The Lighter
Wooden Teeth | 40 Black crackle steel is a rough bed for a felt pad, a spring tip, a hinge pin, wick strangled by copper, and flint. A swing, a click and the lid drops open.
Millions of sizzling birds in the night, setting the fluid ablaze, and a familiar flicker in the half light awakes.
marc
A hinge, a cam spring, the infamous blaze across some country in nineteen-seventy.
You and I bought in bulk and drank like fiends because We were no strangers to the night shift.
Do you want me to apologize for sucking You into my pink sweater vacuum?
Get mad at you but not too mad
When you said “I love you” for the first time it sounded like a date you had crossed off on your calendar, As if you had measured out the number of days you needed to wait to say it And then you did it in between going to the grocery store and getting gas for the truck. But it sounded right, when you said it. We did everything the right way, and I wanted to be someone who could say they did something the “right way.” You got mad at me the way people expected you to get mad at me, Apologized when people expected you to apologize. And I was supposed to do what you expected me to do too: Forgive you
Where you locked eyes on my springy body
The fights we had felt like eating a sour cherry with the pit still inside, Not like the fresh ones that were the color of that rouge you liked me to wear when we went out (I think you liked it so much because it complemented the saucy meatball grinder we split on our first date and it was everything you ever wanted- big, juicy, and cheap.)
And my prom-queen face was good to you too if you care to remember, Brushing your cheek with mine as you tried to fit your square head around my big hair (which you once called wolf-like) so we could take a picture, Making you a New York cheesecake from scratch on your birthday even though neither of us is from New York and it was my least impressive dessert. I even pretended to like baseball more than tennis (for a little bit!)
The time we spent together smells like that dark roast coffee
And I grazed the top of the hedges surrounding the front porch, and you began to think you wouldn’t ever leave.
I didn’t like your buzzcut but all my other boyfriends had hair that was long and slick with trouble so it seemed like a good idea to try and like your hair. Your buzzcut was good to me though; I never felt like you were going to run around with another haircut or break the windows of my car or move into my mother’s basement and refuse to leave.
Love you, Love you, Love you We loved to pretend to love each other, and it was a lie almost as tall as I was when you picked me up and I wore the pink sweater. We are both a little shorter now, and I’m not sorry about it.
lauren danielowski Exit Interview
41 | Wooden Teeth
Wooden Teeth | 42
samsara counts Wake
Guiltily, I listen to your playlist, prelude to the familiar sequence: I bask in the heat, swirling in the air from the shower. I dress in whatever is near; padding my body with layers against the chill. I greet the dark lingering in the windows and faraway dawns reply, beckoning me to settle. These days, I drink coffee, mindlessly, religiously. You hated coffee, despised watching my hands shake. Yet, I always freeze, suffer without it. Lobbing the old filter into the bin, I watch it arc, jerking through the air. I miss; you wouldn’t. It’s never the destination: as much of a day as any other, ashen in its tedium, light absorbed by the prosaic pace. Momentum takes the place of peace: I skate the fear of stopping, of the lack of occupied time. Ever forward, pure motion, instead of being seized by the weight of memories beginning to dim. It propels me, blindly continuing, desperate to free myself from its pursuit. Each morning I never quite reach you, yet each morning is the same: the rituals I uphold to remember you, consciously dwelling on the absence of those to come.
I fight off dreams of lying back down. I breathe in the sharp air of morning, reach for my phone, fill the space with sound.
43 | Wooden Teeth
ashley llanes Veteran
samsara counts is a freshman from Fort Worth, Texas double-majoring in Computer Science & Creative Writing and English. She enjoys puns, politics, alliteration, math, programming, and listening to way too much indie music.
lauren danielowski is a sophomore from Woodbury, CT. When she is not worshipping Toni Morrison like a deity, you can find her drinking dangerous amounts of Coke Zero. paige davis is a sophomore from malvern, Pennsylvania. She doesn't know what to do with her life, but her backup plan is to have a chicken farm. leah edwards is a talented artist and filmmaker completing degrees in Philosophy and Journalism. Three of her biggest pastimes are acting like she's being productive, taking long walks inside Metro stations, and dressing like Michael Jackson; although she would argue that she re ally is being productive, she has a love-hate relationship with Metro, and she never intended to dress like MJ in the first place.
Wooden Teeth | 44 jason bentley: This piece was written as summation of my year on the floor of all floors. To everyone, and everyone knows who they are, thank you for everything
sarah fannon is a junior who lives her life by two rules: 1. Don't buy more books until you finish the ones you already have. 2. Screw that rule. Buy all of the books. anna fenzel is a junior who has failed to launch from her hometown of Washington, DC. She can be found inside of her mother's fridge, scouring for food. marc devin hisarli is a junior from Munich, Germany who didn't know how to make this funnier because Germans have no sense of humor. tara kosowski is a sophomore from Philadelphia, PA. Woman. Reads. Will eat leftovers. May seem skitty at first but will warm up if given a treat. $200 adoption fee ashley llanes is a Miami based photographer who just transferred to The Corcoran. Ashley Spends most of the time in the darkroom or out shooting new work to further develop. m.e. may is a sophomore Creative Writing and English major who isn't quite sure how she got here. She might secretly be a velociraptor. mel piskai is a junior from West Chester, Pennsylvania. She is great at telling dad jokes, and doesn't trust atoms because they make up every thing. #righthandmel michelle ritota is a freshman from Begren County, New Jersey. She is an artist, a writer, and exercise-enthusiast. gabriel simon is a senior. They think that this would be a good place to acknowledge that the joke structure of the two-line bio is a barrier to real human connection. kayla williams is a junior studying sociology. She enjoys playing in the dirt, eating tomatoes, and buying too many essay collections.
contributor biographies
45 | Wooden Teeth
