Teeth

subtract. My head in a surgeon’s chair, checking

Lao Tsu’s math as these teeth I barely knew

I had (mumbled of as wisdom) introduced

themselves—rude party guests—right as they had

to go, their pinched goodbye-hello. Like learning

you’ve been speaking your whole life in prose,

or my late eighth-grade astonishment that I—

confirmed a Gentile in almost all respects—

had hung so long among the circumcised.

Hard to know what you have, I’ll have you know.

Harder to know what you haven’t. Knowledge! The nerve!

Hushed up like a gulp behind the tongue,

shrewdly shooting roots down at an age

my gums were smug from rolling words around,

when my morals (like my molars) proved

basically interchangeable. Wise

I wasn’t, but I wanted it so painfully then.

Now I’ve had it—you have it, doc. You know

the drill, or whatever you’ve got. Take it away . . .