Tooth Painter
He was tall, lean, serious
about his profession,
said it disturbed him
to see mismatched teeth.
Squinting, he asked me
to turn toward the light
as he held an unglazed crown
by my upper incisors.
With a small brush he applied
yellow, gray, pink, violet
and green from a palette of glazes,
then fired it at sixteen hundred
degrees. We went outside
to check the final color,
and he was pleased. Today
the dentist put it in my mouth,
and no one could ever guess
my secret: there’s no one quite
like me, and I can prove it
by the unique shade of
the ivory sculptures attached
to bony sockets in my jaw.
A gallery opens when I smile.
Even the forgery gleams.
about his profession,
said it disturbed him
to see mismatched teeth.
Squinting, he asked me
to turn toward the light
as he held an unglazed crown
by my upper incisors.
With a small brush he applied
yellow, gray, pink, violet
and green from a palette of glazes,
then fired it at sixteen hundred
degrees. We went outside
to check the final color,
and he was pleased. Today
the dentist put it in my mouth,
and no one could ever guess
my secret: there’s no one quite
like me, and I can prove it
by the unique shade of
the ivory sculptures attached
to bony sockets in my jaw.
A gallery opens when I smile.
Even the forgery gleams.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Lucille Lang Day and reprinted from The Curvature of Blue, Cervena Barva Press, 2009, by permission of Lucille Lang Day and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.