precise and concise

By: Lee Waters

atrophic jaw smokes paint and queues her words in ordered rows.

they’re bread for ducks, sopping, bloating livers.

the lemmings too will soon be paste, just out of frame. . . .

do you like a pun? a play-on-words?

last spring i wrote a poem a day,

and kept perhaps each third.

no play today—each word’s like pulling teeth.

they won’t behave—

my teeth were triangles and flat planes crowding forward and jumping from my mouth and the doctor installed wires and telescoping arms to hold my jaw forwards and for four years i couldn’t chew all i had was to bite my ten front teeth gnashing unaligned and the rods and the wires bled my cheeks they scarred my lips they cut me every time i spoke or smiled or frowned they cut me and i knew i needed it i couldn’t breathe or run i barely moved but for four years they cut me every time i spoke or smiled or frowned and i was perfectly quiet:

that’s the pun. did you like it?

cut before and cut completely—

stuck in the process—

i can’t write any more—

last spring i wrote a friend that i had found my voice again.

we don’t speak

anymore.