Gift for my husband’s 32nd birthday
Mouth of the Year
Gift for my husband’s 32nd birthday
"Let us count the teeth in your mouth
one by one with our little fingers.
Surely you have the same as everyone
else but nothing about you is
the same as everyone else
with your so much more in there
to see and to be seen."
So I smile, and you open wide, and I wiggle
my pinky-tip over the crowns of many kings.
You could chomp down on me now and
crush my bones, but you won’t.
Yours is not that kind of power
Ours is not that kind of throne.
But the numbers are in
and powerful, you are
ready to sink your 32
teeth where they belong
In this new Earth, tear off
your plot and plant steel beams
with industrial petals of glass*
thrust your tusks into a skyline made
to outlast the horizon of our age,
its every shape an expression of dreams:
Enter the epoch of being seen.
"Beam skyward, unshakably, my love,
for you are strong, well-rooted and wise,
incisive with a willpower set as granite,
neither thunder nor quakes could tamp it.
Now, open that mouth and command it."
* My husband is an architect.