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"Mouth of the Year"

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.



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