Poetry by Aimee McCague

                    ​ Fred von Graf CC



Receding Gums Murphy

Last night you dreamt you lost your teeth
You put your hand in your mouth
Thumb against forefinger
And with hardly a pull
They came loose
One by one
You released them from your bleeding gums
The cold air whistling through the gaping cavities
As the blood dripped down on the dirty sink
And you looked at your reflection in the cracked mirror
The colour drained from your face
And rubbed your swollen gums together until they ached

This morning the electric toothbrush whirred
As you removed the creeping plaque
And glided cautiously over the aging fillings 
And tender palate
You spooled the minty floss around your finger
And sawed it up and down between your teeth
You imagined the clink 
Of each tooth falling onto the porcelain
And the rotting molars turning to dust in your mouth
As you crunched down and chewed on the crumbling bone

You picture this throughout the day
Every day
As your knees bounce up and down
And people ask if you’re okay, you look nervous
Your tongue always probing 
Swearing that this time you felt a movement
A slight wobble 
A sign of things to come

Maybe it’s the cigarettes that made your gums this way
The ‘just two a day’ –
When you wake up
And before you go to bed
That quickly became ten a day
One when you arrive at a place
And one every time you leave

You don’t want to go for a checkup
To your childhood dentist
He’ll see the nicotine stains
And you think you’ll disappoint him

You rinse and repeat 
The same routine every night
Your fingers pulling your lips down
To look at your gums in the mirror
Red raw and inflamed
Creeping further back each time
Incrementally
Naked bone weary and exposed

​

​

Mad Dog      


We climbed the steel steps with beer in our bellies
And anticipation in our thumping hearts
The man took our tokens and we sat down on the squeaky plastic seats
Saying how much we loved each other
Posing for pictures on our phones before it began
They waited while others got on and we looked around –
The drawings on the walls like snapshots of our own nightmares
Monsters coming out from the shadows - Freddy Krueger grabbing at our throats
And all around us sorority girls with 1980’s haircuts
Their last breath a synthy scream 

It started off slow - our circular chariots making a full rotation
At the hands of the distracted attendant 
The music was like our blood – heightened –
Awakening those memories from not so long ago 
We had climbed over that wall into a place beyond
From something base and tacky into something more
And as we fell into one another
The music becoming faster, harder - our cheeks raw and tasting of metal 
The faces on the walls started to change
We spun faster and the faces creeped closer towards us
Bathed in a red haze, grotesque, ever changing - until they slowed

It was as though we slowed with them, although the world still spun outside
They grew larger and sprouted bodies, greeting us with icy cold smiles
A hand reached out and I reached back 
But it withered and wasted away 
Then I looked up and saw my own eyes staring back 
They grew fainter, the colour draining from their irises
My throat ached to shout out 
But there was no-one to hear

I looked at my friends and realized I was on my own
They saw nothing but their own arms in the air, screaming and cheering for life
The faces were gone too 
Replaced by a warmth enveloping me in its arms 
Though the ride slowed and the strobe lights ceased their dance 
I felt a chill descend - an icy hand on my shoulder 
A snarling dog
Teeth bared at my heels.         

​

Aimee McCague is a writer from Monaghan, Ireland. She received an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, London and a BA in English and Spanish from NUI Galway. Aimee has had short stories published in NUIG’s Ropes publication, as well as having a story shortlisted for the James Plunkett Short Story Award. She enjoys writing short stories and attending poetry nights in Dublin.  

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