I find your suggestions interesting, Sheila. What struck me most in Max’s poem, still here, is catching that sense of largeness the tongue knows…
And, Max, the whole scene enacted…
Doug
On Oct 7, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Max, just a thought on possible shift of sequence and a deletion. Sheila
>
>
> ‘Plenty of teeth left!’
> I grimace at the wife.
> She blenches and flinches,
> wields defensively
> her clenched chopsticks.
>
> It’s happened to her,
> more than once - and at
> the time was eating out.
> This tooth I've lost,
> picked out by fateI
>
> Like chook-bones
> tooth fragments
> are chomped on
> and - preferably -
> not swallowed.
>
> In this case, less tooth
> joined the bone pile
> on the side of my plate
> than my tongue sensed
> I’d lost from my mouth.
>
> in Seattle’s Chinatown
> this summer night.
> My smile’s no worse
> than it ever was - a smile
> these days you'll seldom see.
>
> But I smile inwardly.
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 5:16 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I left my tooth,
>> or most of it,
>> in Chinatown,
>> where a chook-bone
>> shocked and broke it.
>>
>> Like chook-bones
>> tooth fragments
>> are chomped on
>> and - preferably -
>> not swallowed.
>>
>> In this case, less tooth
>> joined the bone pile
>> on the side of my plate
>> than my tongue sensed
>> I’d lost from my mouth.
>>
>> ‘Plenty of teeth left!’
>> I grimace at the wife.
>> She blenches and flinches,
>> wields defensively
>> her clenched chopsticks.
>>
>> It’s happened to her,
>> more than once - and at
>> the time was eating out.
>> This tooth I've lost,
>> picked out by fate
>>
>> in Seattle’s Chinatown
>> this summer night.
>> My smile’s no worse
>> than it ever was - a smile
>> these days you'll seldom see.
>>
>> But I smile inwardly.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch.
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