Party Teeth

“I needed a new set, so I got ‘em made from opal, just for the hell of it. Chomped marvelously well, too.” – Harold Hodge, Australian bookmaker, slaughterhouse owner, and opal buyer, who commissioned and wore the world’s first pair of opalized dentures

What will we find when we go digging—

What gifts will we cut from this opened earth—

I had one of those teeth dreams once

Tools all lined up on a table beside the dental chair

and within a metal cleaning train, severed tongues

displayed like rubies in a jewelry case. They looked

delicious, expectant. I woke up before I got to taste them.

You never know what you’ll discover with a pickaxe

or a drill. Explosives are the fastest way to rearrange

the earth, but you could lose an eye if you’re not careful,

or your whole face. That’s life though, isn’t it—a little death

moves in wherever the blood recedes, into whatever crevice

it can settle. And you can always replace that eye, anyway—

imagine a perfect round pearl, or a milky blue moonstone—

with enough money, we could look into your face and see

the ocean and the sky at the same time. With enough money,

we can dig as deep as we want, carve out this bluegreen vein

of iridescent earth. With enough money, we can scrape

the enamel from our teeth and replace it with light.

Maria Provenzano (she/her) is a poet based in southern New Jersey. She writes about nature and identity and her work can be found or is forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal, The Closed Eye Open, and First Wave: A Beach Bards Anthology. She lives by the ocean with her best friend (a phenomenal writer, professor, and human) and their three small and furry children: Sweet Potato Pancake (rabbit), Peregrin Took, and Midnight (guinea pigs).