A History of My Mouth

I never wanted to keep the secrets life asked me to keep. The felonies I’ve forgotten. The married women who said they loved me during flailing moments while turning their eyes away. That I never kissed my mother.

After a woman complained she wished I were a better kisser, I drove home in the deepening dark. And berated myself with the realisation my mouth harboured unripened persimmons among my awkward advances.

I‘ve never tasted silver or burgundy. Or known love in the time of clementines. I call a fool a fool, even when I face one in the mirror.

Emma’s Sunglasses

I spent years on a spinner rack in a head shop on Godman Avenue. The manager of the Strand Record Store bought me along with a packet of joint papers during a close-out sale. The rhinestones that decorated my frame fell out while “Up Jumps da Boogie” hit the turntable during the Clinton years. I rattled my bones on a muddy hill in Noblesville while U2 played “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The Strand lady married a bass player and donated me to Goodwill. A culinary student from Ivy Tech shoplifted me on a dare for her girlfriend. The BFF gave my wrap-around self to her roommate, who wore me while waiting tables at White River Landing.

After the waitress and a fling boy broke into a vintage clothing shop for a Hallowe’en costume and left me perched on a skeleton’s forehead. Before an undercover cop confiscated me. I hibernated in an evidence box until the officer took me home as a present for his mother-in-law’s Christmas stocking. She passed after breaking her neck falling into her root cellar, and I got pitched into a shoe box that Emma bought at a Middletown estate sale for a quid.

Now I hang out at art fairs and free concerts. My lenses darken whenever the Hoosier heartlander sings “I Saw You First.”

The Goddess of the Hunt

She sat beside me in a Midwest poetry workshop. The session where the poet opened by proclaiming art strives for beauty rather than something as common as being pretty. I never knew her name so I called her Diana, a name my mother liked for its Roman goddess honourifics. As I side-eyed the rose tattoo on top of Diana’s right breast, I pretended to listen to the poet contrasting a Sappho poem with an Alka-Seltzer commercial. And lost myself in the mists of Coco Chanel wafting about my head every time Diana primped her hair.

From the lecture, I heard phrases about capturing the ghost that haunts a poem by tossing a tissue over invisible shapes. Beside me, Diana ornamented her notes with bows and arrows. Winged hearts. A series of Xs and Os, all printed in purple ink.

The poet assigned a ghost walk so that the workshoppers might bring back an object which spoke to our ability to summon art from the mundane. Following the dismissal, I turned to introduce myself to the woman I had christened Diana, only to find her canoodling with the Clint Eastwood stunt double who sat on her other side.

During the ghost walk I took by myself, I discovered a mud-caked Magic 8 Ball under the bridge across the Duck Pond. Years later, the only answer the toy ever musters is: Better not tell you now.