behind teeth by emily brandt
Published by Full Court. Brooklyn, NY Copyright Š 2014 http://fullcourtbooks.com/ Edited by Matt L. Rohrer Cover by Josh Evans http://mrjoshevans.com Layout by Jacob I. Evans
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Deep Blue I was one of those girls who used pliers to zip their flies. I had bad teeth and ugly jeans, a hair dryer blowing incessantly, a small dog snapping at my ankles, my ankles tucked neatly into white socks. I combed my hair, whirring in clouds of wind, with a sewing needle, some thread. I wove in blackberries and blackbird feathers, and beaks, and Eric’s model ship, and buttons from the button box, and dollhouse tables, even a salt lick from the stables where I liked to lay in hay.
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Relic My mother at the board in the absence of a desk. A birthday coming. She is ironing money spraying starch and humming. Mary of Lourdes on the sill and coins. She irons daily in this shrine she built
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from her closed mouth. The room alit. Holy water doused on matchsticks.
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Which Mary Are You Wearing? I used to know them all: Lourdes, Medjugorje, Guadalupe, and all of the mysteries and all of the stations, all of it. If I had a book, I know it would come back quickly, us lining up like pigeons on a wire to kiss Christ’s feet, the priest wiping each mouth from the brass, and I’d think, Don’t watch me, and wipe my lips with my palms, then cover my face like my mother taught me. She used to cry in there, then go home, put whole cloves of garlic in the soup so they get soft as cake in your mouth. I plant my cloves in November and the bulbs are grown by June, blessed art thou, gleaming white under the dirt, the Lord is with thee, gleaming white under the dirt.
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Sweet Sixteen I was a poplar gold leaves wobbling. A lorrie loaded full with coal. A swallow with swollen knuckles my vocal chords plucked and restrung. My hammers and gears didn’t chide in the way that I wanted and the want grew operatic and gastric. My hair was full with cobwebs, maddening fingers that picked and combed. I sat inside on mother’s couch, brushing names from my hair, light passing through, stretching it taut swelling with storm.
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I thought it could be fine to die, stuck thick in that solitary state. Someone else will comb my cobwebs and cross my fingers gently. The windowsill is lined with horseflies, their tiny black legs bent toward the sun.
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Absence Absence, she says, is like wind – not the way wind rushes into an open mouth blowing cheeks into fleshy balloons, not the way wind rustles up sand into mounds at your feet – it puts a small fire out. Sunlight stripes windows left closed. She distills herself into the hum of electric air, leaving her solid adage on a trimmed tray, like a Honey-baked ham with pineapple rings. This recipe, like her others, is written in blue ink on a card, three by five, and filed by letter in a tin box that opens. A locked jaw. Behind it, Icebox cake, Jell-o surprise, Lemon meringue pie, dozens of yellowed cards, a thousand times read. Absence, she says, is like wind – not the way wind goads the hem of your dress, not the way wind rustles white blossoms of dogwoods on lawns tended by tanned men – it kindles a large flame but I’m sure she meant restless. In all her instructions,
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there isn’t a card that says this is when the cake is done, this is the moment the bread rises, this is the time it takes for icing to drizzle perfectly down the sides. These details she left to chance.
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I Stued My Bra with Socks I say I want to be her but I know I want to touch her and so I make myself a mannequin. The bee’s stinger inside the blonde hair etches lines of a map: the way to the trail in the woods where the reeds went up in flame, and the neighborhood pools, which water is warmest and which will sting your eyes.
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Kills and Cooks My mama, she kills and cooks meat in the pan. Some words shouldn’t be spoken – devil is the first. The birds are terrible. Their fat is a lie. She can peel back the skin with her mouth shut. Whore is the other. The wings spread before the hammer, its blow cool and quiet. She sings alleluia, mouthing syllables. She cuts the insides, makes me bite.
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A Key Tied to an Ankle A sign painted dead whale isn’t lying. Take a closer look: the water is filthymom filthydad. The water is filth. Smells more like roadkill than fishgut and no one carries a gun not the cops or anyone. They eat sharks that swim then sink like a stone at the mention of your swing set disappearance and reappearance as driver of the all-girls’ ice-cream truck. We get to know each other in strange ways these days. Come over.
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I’ve got nine Barbies and you can bring Han Solo and things will get good. I might wet the bed but a good friend would never. Would just brush the crumbs out of the sheets.
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Diving into Ivy I was silent, my entire body bitten off. It’s not so easy to believe myself when I talk, when I wait til my tea gets cold to drink it and then shiver. 1 in 3 of you have stopped reading by now 1 in 3 or 1 in 4, I don’t know anymore. I can count the women I love who’ve been raped: There are names and places and dates. I listen until I can’t. Not outside my kitchen or yours. Kitchens are the best, don’t you agree? Aren’t they vermouth?
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Aren’t they sugar? My mom can’t sleep plays solitaire at the table. I go downstairs and watch. Insomnia’s good for painters. I painted in the night, just bored, just shivering. There are hearts and there are hearts. I hate when people call it steak when it’s a cow. I hate when people call it juicy when it’s blood.
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Horoscope Eric said, while stretching, pick up your hand and hold it up to the sun. See how much light shines through. The light that doesn’t make it gets stuck somewhere in the front back or middle of your hand. In the middle of your hand are all the states that have not yet been made United States of America which are most of the states in the world. The Hawaiian language only has thirteen letters in its alphabet. I suspect that a similar progression is in store for you in the coming year, Leo. I suspect that you’ll drop your hand in the grass infested with anthills and watch as they colonize it.
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Bedbugs Are People Too It’s enough that she’s pregnant, but today Veronika comes in with a bedbug on her hoodie. Elijah kills it. I scoop it up with an index card, pat her shoulder, put the bug inside a school issued envelope bring it up to custodial for confirmation from the authorities and Veronika and her sisters get sent home. A letter is copied, distributed schoolwide. It says bedbugs are harmless and do not spread disease and then, at nighƫme they feed on human blood. At three, I’m in the school kitchen, alone, in the dark, stripped down among the counters. The floor is cold and clean, absorbs the sun’s gray. Down the hall a door opens and shuts like a valve. Water runs through pipes, the heaters rush.
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I run my clothes through the dryer on high, thirty minutes of crouching in skin, of massacring the invisible, the imagined.
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Emily Well, it’s time for sleep again, bang the pillow to my head. I’ll call you three times in the morning and send you sweet texts all day. Fill my thermos with spiced tea. I’m here in the mirror just giving and giving. Slide down your pants, the pillow. Brush the greens out of my teeth.
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A bathroom in Natalie’s old house sitting, both, tubbed. June gulls flock. The window squawks.
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Emileeeeeee we’re going to lift you up we’re going to lift you up. You’re light as a feather.
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Why does Augustine confess to me?
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May I become more free, more still, go beyond language into heart failure,
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get back to the back back of the brain and turn the microphone on.
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I like how you can look at 9 x 9 and know 81! and never say the numbers in your head.
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Shadow work.
* Gather around the white table. Aunt Betty’s old thing.
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It’s so close to the stove. Who set up the American kitchen so we have to carry our food from fire to table? A real problem like the locks on the door keeping me in and you all out. Well, I’m disappointed by this:
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Bye Boy in memory of I.R. Ralph said while preparing for the state test My friend shot himself in the head and I said When. This was old news had happened three years ago but he thought of it now while reading a passage about Ezra bringing Mrs. Scarlatti his special garlic soup twenty cloves of garlic and I wondered if Ralph bought his weed from Elijah and if Ralph would show up for the Regents which he surely could pass if he’s there. I admit I was glad that Elijah’s wake was the night of my father’s party because I was nervous to go to a wake in East New York
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by myself for a boy who used to show up late and say Sorry Miss and Yes Miss and stash all his work in a binder on a shelf in the room so he never had to carry things home. I gave the binder to his mother who couldn’t look at his name in his hand on the front. When we read The Catcher in the Rye we listed out stereotypes of rich white people and Ralph said White people get the best weed. And then on a Friday Elijah got shot in the back in Bed Stuy. Tasha heard the gunshot. I got the call the next morning and searched online for his name. And after the finances got squared away and the Crime Victims Unit and the Department of Education paid up with checks
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for the burial which his family couldn’t afford five of us crammed in a car and rode. We sat an hour parked in the rain at the Cyprus Hills Cemetery waiting for the procession. And then we filed up the small hill in the mud and the priest prayed and the women sang and the mother her hair in a plastic bag a bag over her dress shouted Bye Boy as the white casket lowered and she threw handfuls of mud. And we all threw a rose. And I crossed Elijah’s name off the attendance list in English and I crossed Elijah’s name off the attendance list in Creative Writing
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but I didn’t cross his name o the late log. In the evening in a room full of white women and a few white men I wept on my yoga mat in shavasana. A stereotype. In the night a student called me Fat bitch and I screamed in her face You fucking cunt and woke up teeth clenched and Eric rolled on his side and slid his hand in my underwear. I pulled it out and flung his arm back though I generally welcome his palm in my sleep.
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Acknowledgements I am grateful to the editors of the following publications, in which these poems have appeared in various iterations: The Atlas Review: “Bye Boy” Bodega: “A Key Tied to an Ankle” The Furnace Review: “Absence” Jellyfish: “Emily” Reconfigurations: “Deep Blue” Tirage Monthly: “Which Mary Are You Wearing?”
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