I pull teeth, and: The Garden, and: Circle Ode, and: Everything Will Be Like This Again

Abstract

I pull teeth, and: The Garden, and: Circle Ode, and: Everything Will Be Like This Again Lucy Western (bio) I pull teeth I pull teeth interminably / nothing about it is easy /nothing about it is hard / as to narrative / leave itlying / sell me heaven in the form of a word / thatcomes when it's called / forget poetry / show meheaven in the form of a dog / that shits on the side ofthe road / where I'm standing / forget standing / giveme sweetness / in the form of a lemon-lacqueredbird / soon I swear I'll be brave / or braver / whichis worse / if god is a carousel we can't / jump off /show me a heaven / where the little ones gather / inlanterns / and fear no burning / however much theywant to / hurry things along [End Page 29] The Garden Into arms emptied of roving shelet fall each earthly possession—toothpick, plastic shovel, three supple strands of hair—andburied them in the garden, whereall things tended towards silence or attended it. What grew from therestood like floral giants, each onerarer than the next: pungent silences; red ones; silences in salacious bunches;a thicket of silences so dense they'd breakteeth. For a long while she knelt there rehearsing her body against the seasonsthe weight of which only the toothpick andthe shovel and the strands of hair remember. [End Page 30] Circle Ode God but we do fear them don't weancient vaginal abyssor beehive, trypophilic bliss,coffee cup packed tightwith froth. We couldn't keepthe flowers, but we did—in a glass stein with ateaspoon of sugar & allkinds of sunlight—giftto my sister on her wayhome. Couldn't & did,because my father believesthat nothing should be ours alonethe way my mother believes in beauty Lately I've been waking up & knowingI have nothing, & curlingmy body around the empty spaceas though that way I could protect itas though that way it could be worth protecting Lately I've been thinking abouthow logic mangles language& not the other way around (Round as madrigals, asovaries, as the glowof the Annunciated's face;round like that) Summer and words flee from meaningas though mouths were merely soundbreaking open, opening, and nota brave and terrible way into the dark In the end they lasted two days:we were lucky to have themdropped as they wereinto the center of this world [End Page 31] (Couldn't & did, becausean infinity of arcs can also bepared down to one: eyeunblinking, lordwithout lid) [End Page 32] Everything Will Be Like This Again March. Loss is perenniallike marigolds, which is to saysometimes it sows itself. I holdmy hands out to the orangepetals of my anger, arrangethem artfully around the kitchentable, listen to them shiftand shudder against the lacqueredwood. I know them onlyby their color. I do not dareto know them better. It was morningand the wind chimesat the end of the street were sayingyield. Beneath them curleda small brown creaturenewly warm. Inside the houseI stood before a mirror and pushedmy shoulders down with my ownhands. The skin fellinto piles of scarves. I thought:I have not seenmy face in years. [End Page 33] Lucy Western lucy western is a middle-school Latin teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work has previously appeared in New York Quarterly, 3rd Wednesday, and The Inflectionist Review. Copyright © 2023 University of North Dakota